This is being picky but any thoughts on why the skill astrocartography exists rather than astrogation?

Astrogation would be about actually travelling in space where as astrocartography would be about mapping space right?

The description on page 57 does focus on maps but two of the three examples are about travel..or astrogation.

Maybe the creators thought it sounded cooler.

I'd like to just get a general consensus on the idea of dealing strain to PCs when they travel from one town to the next.
Is that a proper/fair use of Strain in Genesys?
Any and all Opinions on this are welcome.

I am creating a Firefly setting for Genesys and I have a ton of Firefly/Serenity resources that I am working on converting over. This includes a massive amount of ships.

Is there a resource that would allow me to put in ship dimensions, etc, and have it help me with ship stats for Genesys?

My two year long campaign is coming to a close in a matter of months and I'm looking for some advice/suggestions/inspiration for the grand finale combat encounter. For reference these are characters who have approximately 175 awarded XP at this point.

I'm envisioning a combat scenario where the 5 PCs are faced off against a horde of combatants, and they much reach an objective on the battlefield before...and that's where I get stuck. Before they're overwhelmed? Before they're all killed? Before a certain number of turns? I'm looking to add a sense of urgency to an already dire situation.

Many thanks for your thoughts!

I'm a GM who's new to Genesys and I have a player who's put together a high-Agility, low-Brawn character who nevertheless will probably get into some fights. To our mind it makes sense that Agility should have some defensive utility representing the character's ability to dodge, but unless I've missed something this is simply not the case by default.

I thought there might be a Talent that allowed one to do this, but again, I can't find any, even on the big list of Talents from all splatbooks collected here. The obvious next step is to homebrew one, but I'm hesitant to do so since I'm new to the system and don't have a good sense of its balance yet.

Is there any officially published Talent or other way to use Agility defensively? If not, would anyone care to take a crack at homebrewing one? I was thinking something simple like "Add your Agility to your Melee Defense", but I'm not sure what Tier that would be, or whether it existing at all would break the game in some unanticipated way.

(Incidentally, I know the Finesse Talent lets you use your Agility offensively. If anything that makes me worry the decision not to have a defensive equivalent was deliberate, though I can't fathom why.)

If relevant, we're using the Shadow of the Beanstalk cyberpunk setting, though I'd be happy for an answer from a different setting if it could be reasonably reskinned.

Thanks in advance!

I am currently setting up for my first Genesys game, after years of playtime in Edge.
I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to incorporate this idea of an old alien race, with mass amounts of knowledge being their main ability.
I was thinking something to do with Knowledge checks? Ideas?

Pretty much what it says on the tin. I am trying to find a low-disruption way to remove the GM from the Story Point economy.

And look, Story points come up all the time here. Suffice it to say I have had many conversations about them before and I still think they’re bad. I’m glad if they work for you but I have been playing since Core and they do not work for me. I would love to just go to a game that doesn’t have them but I want the narrative dice and short of finding a used copy of Warhammer 3 on ebay…here we are.

I run Story Points more like a traditional Hero Point from something like PF2. It can be spent on the Abilities and Talents that require it or used to monkey with the dice (upgrade, downgrade, maybe a reroll or an auto success in the right spot by GM fiat).

My problem is…I hate using them as a GM. There is nothing I would use them for that is not better handled by the narrative dice or my own GM discretion. If I want to upgrade my boss’s next attack for dramatic purposes…I will do it. And I will weave it into the narrative for why it happened. If I want some task to have the potential for some greater dire consequence I will upgrade the difficulty because of what is going on in the story. I have oft heard that some players will find this cheap and adversarial. But that is not my experience. My experience is the opposite in fact. By spending a Story Point I pull the players out of the story and become the opponent in a game using a resource rather than a narrator describing the logical outcome of the event in the world. They WOULD have succeeded if only the GM had not…

But…the heroes need Story Points. And if I’m not spending them, they are only getting one per session to spend.

I am looking for help finding better ways to have those points flow back to the players without me as a GM using them as a resource. Preferably something that kicks them back as the stakes and drama heighten. Higher the stakes > higher the resources the players have to laugh in the face of the odds.

EDIT:

Thanks for the advice.

Several comments pointed out again that what i am trying to do simply runs counter to the intended design of the game.

That's fair.

Perhaps asking to brainstorm solutions to that issue within my narrow needs is asking too much of the system.

I'll give some of the suggestions here a pass through with my players and find something that will work for out group.

Or...I bite the bullet and pay the highway robbery price for some Warhammer 3 dice and play that since it seems more what we're looking for.

Hi! I'm looking to run an eldritch survival themed west march and looking for advice for setting up mechanics. The idea is a city is just going to fall into an eldritch plane full of mutants weird magic and other genre nonsense. The three styles of play will be political making factions allying npcs etc, exploration to go out locate resources and slay monsters, and base building to improve the city and discover things scientifically. I would love ideas of mechanics to use to make these work. Specifically ideas about:

Downtimes and how much players should be allowed to do during them?
How much xp is too much and players are too powerful?
Good faction and base subsystems?
Mutation mechanics? (I am thinking of just having secret talents people get and some having draw backs)
How to handle followers/pets?
Any other general advice!

I am currently looking through my starwars stuff cause I know they have some mechanics for things like this, but direction and suggestion is greatly appreciated!

I am in the process of developing a fantasy Genesys campaign that revolves around exploring a "mega dungeon" underground complex with various biomes/regions. How does everyone handle traversing through a large area with tons of different regions and rooms without needing to flesh out every 30' hallway and meaningless area? Also if you feel like reading a bunch you can weigh in on my idea below.

I want the dungeon to be massive, but the thought of mapping out 100+ rooms and passages feels tedious and somewhat against the Genesys approach of abstract distance measuring. I also want traversing the areas to have risks and costs involved so the party has to think about how far they explore. Here is what I am thinking to handle this:

• I am only mapping out the important areas of interest (AOIs) in the dungeon. These will be the impactful parts where the story moves forward and will be very distinct from each other. In my master map of the dungeon these are simply boxes with a name.
• Each AOI can have multiple exits from them. To keep the mapping simple, it will simply be up to 4 exits from any of the cardinal directions. These are represented as lines connecting the AOI boxes on my master map.
• Players should be able to keep their own maps very simply as everything fits on a grid and is just boxes connected by lines. I will give them a partially finished map from a dead adventurer to give them an idea of how to do it. They can then traverse the dungeon with something like "lets go west to the Crystal Caves, south into the Fungal Forest, then see what is farther west from there!" and not have to trace a path through lots of different passages.
• Moving from one AOI to another represents the players traveling through a series of hallways, tunnels, chambers, etc. until they reach the important area. Going through this area for the first time will call for a exploration roll (Survival check). Successes/failures will determine how much time it takes the party to find their way through this abstracted area of the dungeon (they will always make it, it is just a question of time). Advantage/disadvantage could be used to inflict strain (the party runs into strenuous terrain) or could impact the roll for random encounters (next point).
• When travelling through the dungeon, I will call for a random encounter roll that will be a Stealth check. The results can determine if they run into anything or how good/bad the encounter is (it isn't all fights). This helps fill in the blank spaces between AOIs and makes travel a bit scarier.
• I am thinking about allowing options for the party alter the exploration/encounter rolls based on how they want to travel. Going slow makes exploration roll harder (i.e. it takes more time), but makes the encounter roll easier. On the other hand, hustling will take much less time but can draw attention.
• Traveling back through already explored areas will not require checks for every movement between AOIs but will instead have one easier check for the entire path (with some small penalties for longer paths). This should make it not so tedious to backtrack but still have some cost for travel.

The idea is it can be bought at level 1, and then upgraded with level 2-5 talents. Do you think this is balanced, underpowered, or overpowered?

Mark of the Beast: 

(Level 1) // Concentration: Yes // Active

Upon purchase, learn 1 beast’s mark:

Bear (BR) (+🟦 Brawl)

Panther (AG) (+🟦 Coordination)

Raven (INT) ((+🟦 Knowledge)

Fox (CUN) (+🟦 Perception)

Make a Hard Primal check, on success you may shapeshift into a learned Beast form. While shapeshifted, swap your WILL with the Beast’s associated stat, and reduce PR to 1. This talent may be used 3 times per long rest.

—-------------------------------

Mark of the Beast Upgrade 

(Level 2 / 3 / 4)

Learn 1 Beast’s Mark from the remaining Beasts.

—-------------------------------

Heart of the Beast (Level 5)

Mark of the Beast Talent now only requires Average Primal Check. While Shapeshifted, taking an extra maneuver to remain in Beast form only takes 1 strain. Talent may now be used 4 times per long rest.

So my players are being hunted by a bounty hunter, in a big city. What rolls should I do? I currently do an opposed check of Streetwise (for my bounty hunter) using their best Agi/Stealth for the difficulty. Should it be Streetwise for the difficulty as well, and their worst stat? Only one player has the anonymous perk, should it be applied there? Thanks in advance!

Advice on awarding XP in the Genesys core rulebook is a bit thin. As far as I can tell, the only things it has to say are on pages 30, 125, and 129. Page 30:

[...] our basic guidance is that each character should earn roughly 20 experience points at the end of each session

Page 125:

At the end of a 3-5 hour game session, we recommend you give each of your players 20 XP. If you want your players to improve their characters more quickly, you can increase that to 25, and likewise if you want slower improvements, you can drop that to 15 XP per session. Shorter sessions should also award 5 less XP, while longer sessions can award 5 more XP.

Page 129:

Receiving experience points during pivotal moments, upon unraveling a mystery, or after defeating a powerful enemy gives players a tangible sense of accomplishment. Providing small bonuses here and there can also be used to reward clever play, neat ideas, or excellent roleplaying.

Okay, so I get that 20 is standard but this can be adjusted up or down for faster or slower improvement, and bonuses can be awarded. Does anyone have more specific advice? For example...

• What counts as a "small bonus" and how frequent is "here and there"?
• What's the correct amount for those "pivotal moments", and how frequently should they occur?
• Should the XP be scaled with the number or difficulty of encounters (and if so, how)?
• When it comes to roleplaying XP specifically, does playing to the character's Motivations count in itself? Does it only count if it comes at the expense of "optimal" play? Should expressing Fears and Desires be incentivised more strongly than expression Strengths and Flaws (just like they award more dice when exploited in social encounters)?

If it matters, our campaigns usually last about twenty to twenty-five 3-hour sessions. I did find this older thread, which was somewhat helpful but more focused on adjusting that baseline (20) up or down. I'm trying to figure out the other stuff.

Thanks in advance!

I'm a reasonably experienced GM in other systems, taking my first plunge into a full-length Genesys campaign after a successful one-shot.

I'd like to use a published setting for my first campaign; I love homebrewing but I'm resisting the urge to do it before I get to grips with the system. Votes in my group are currently split between Shadow of the Beanstalk and Embers of the Imperium. So I humbly ask: those of you who've played both (or at least read both), how do you feel they compare?

I understand this is a pretty broad question, so for some more concrete criteria:

• Is one of the books obviously broken or poorly-designed in some way? Rules that are unclear or contradictory or imbalanced?
• Is one of the worlds much more vividly painted, or more interesting to explore, than the other?
• One concern I had with the core rulebook was that there was a bit more of an emphasis on combat than I would have liked. Do either SOTB or EOTI alleviate this with more rules or subsystems for non-combat scenes?
• Related: do either SOTB or EOTI introduce any subsystems that are just mechanically interesting in themselves? For example, I rather liked the sample magic rules in the Core Rulebook, though of course we won't be using them in either setting.
• Is one book more suitable than the other for a group that's new to Genesys?
• And the million-dollar question: is one of them simply more fun?

Thanks in advance!

PS: Obviously the above is not an exhaustive list; I will be equally grateful for any other information you feel is relevant.

I have a player who is a pure tank. All the Durable, all the best armor, max brawn, etc. A wizard rolled a crit of 101 and removed his arm, but his attack technically did no damage.

Should I have ruled it differently, giving him a different critical hit since it doesn't make sense for the wizard to blast the PC's arm off if he did no damage?

If a player uses heal, are they able to spend the advantage on that roll to do other things (Give boosts to other players and such) or is the advantage "spent" to heal the strain on the target and can't be used on other things?

Mods, please take this down if advertising paid games is not allowed. I didn't see anything about it in the rules, but I could be wrong.

I've got a $5 game on startplaying: https://startplaying.games/adventure/cm3pjiqv20027ugfn204ujpf6

When you think about it, the whole Santa Claus idea is kinda creepy. So there's this guy, with an army of elf slaves, who sneaks into people's houses to deliver a judgement on the morality of children? Like, seriously? And don't even get me started on Krampus, and the whole "He sees you when you're sleeping, and knows when you're awake" line.

This is why, when the mythological Santa actually shows up one Christmas eve in houses all over the world, your fixer decides to pay you to figure out who he is, what he wants, and where all the damned toys came from.

Under the Shadow of the Beanstalk, nothing is simple. And this mission certainly won't be.

So I've been creating my own homebrew setting that has some Cyberpunk/Shadowrun vibes, and I have seen some talents popping up with Aembercraft that seem interesting for my player characters. I just wonder whether the flavour of it has any place in my campaign. I have no experience with the Keyforge setting, but it seems to have an Ebberon feel to it, just a little more steam-punky and in space. Which is definitely not the way I want to go about it. So I'm on the fence about buying the book. Would you recommend the book with keeping in mind what kind of setting I'm trying to shape? How's your overall experience with the book? Does it have enough new content to make the overall purchase worth it?

Thanks in advance!

I have a PC that wants to run a minionmancer style of character in my high fantasy style Genesys campaign. Have you or your players ever run this kind of character before? Off the top of my mind the core rulebook doesn't have anything specific to this kind of character, so if you have anything homebrewed, I'd love to know what you did!

I'm currently running an embers of the Imperium long campaign so I'm very familiar with space opera in Genesys. However I am starting to contemplate a more "realistic" first contact "hard" sci-fi short campaign with the setting being the real world just maybe a decade in the future. Think the Martian.

In general the source material in Embers is not actually helpful, I'm wondering if Sotb would be helpful? I'm interested in the hacking aspects that likely exist plus roughly modern day equipment.

I fully realize I will have plenty of rules and content to come up with but it is nice to have a start.

Thoughts?

I am currently working on building a Firefly universe setting for Genesys RPG. I am putting together a doc with every background, career, skill, talent, and equipment I can get my hands on. I am using all the core and setting rulebooks, as well as extras I have purchased from DriveThru, etc.

I am using both the Firefly and Serenity RPG as inspiration, and I have a few other books (such as Firefly: Traveler's Companion to the 'Verse and Firefly Encyclopedia) to fill in some gaps.

One thing I am wrestling with is how to make Readers as a Career. I am still relatively new to Genesys, and I am actively playing in my first online campaign to get comfortable with the game. I have played alongside, but not seriously studied, the Magic rules.

From my understanding, Readers are basically empaths with limited powers.

Should I make some spells to reflect this ability, or create custom Talents for the class to replicate what I see as Distinctions in the Firefly RPG?

Has anyone done this before? Do you have suggestions?

I'm reading through the Genesys Core Rulebook and it looks like a pretty good candidate for my next campaign. However, I would prefer to take it for a test drive before I commit or shell out for dice and splatbooks. Does anyone have a recommendation for a sample or "starter" adventure? Ideal qualities:

• Legally available for free
• Playable in one or two sessions of 3-4 hours
• Includes pregen player characters
• Covers a variety of in-character activities (social, combat, etc.)
• Covers a variety of core mechanics (structured and unstructured play; standard skill checks, opposed checks, and competitive checks; etc.)
• Fun to play

Obviously there may not be anything that ticks all the boxes, so all but the last are negotiable. Thanks in advance!

(As a side note, in the course of reading the book I expect I will have a number of nitpicky questions. What's the preferred format for newbies to ask questions in this community: spam the sub one at a time, or dump them all into one big confusing post?)

This will sound weird but bear with me. Basically, I have a case where I was running a game set in the Late Roman Republic using one system; there will be a fair amount of mass combat. However, for whatever reasons, the mass combat system for the game I was using, now that I’ve read it more carefully, doesn’t handle large armies past a few thousand people, which really doesn’t work. After a lot of thought and so on, I settled on using Genesys for the system (I’ve already retrofitted a mass combat system from Star Wars to do what I want).

What I’m looking for, maybe, is positivity. I’ve read a lot online, and people talk about a LOT of problems with the system regarding the dice probabilities or characters topping out at 500 XP or having brain freeze (or even just being draining) coming up with narration for the various die results, and so on.

That said, a LOT of people are using this system, so it must be fun. So tell me the fun! I’m invested into this system and using it. Why is it fun for you and your group? What pops out of it that you don’t see in other games you’ve played? What’s it do that gets your gears going?

I can say one little thing for me but it matters: I find the stat blocks okay to look at. My eyes glaze over with equipment, for example, but equipment like weapons are pretty simple, so it doesn’t hurt me to look at this stuff.

Hi all, I'm a long-time D&D DM, but find myself growing tired of the system. I'm several years into a 5e campaign in the Eberron campaign setting and realized I've been avoiding getting the PCs into combat situations, becuase I simply don't enjoy running D&D combat. So we're telling a story that includes some combat, but it emphatically doesn't focus on it.

So, I've talked to my players, and they are open to shifting the campaign to a new system. I've been playing the SciFi game that Genesys is based on for a while, and enjoying it immensely, so I figured I'd explore the possibility of moving the game over to Genesys.

That said, I haven't actually read through the Genesys core book yet, and while I am certainly open to homebrewing content if needed, being a newbie to a system is not the greatest place to start homebrewing from.

So I'm curious what resources are out there for running games set in Eberron in Genesys! Has somebody done a total conversion that's broadly respected?

I know Genesys is setting agnostic, but does it support fantasy pretty well out of the box? Is Realms of Terrinoth considered basically necessary for running fantasy in Gensys?

Has somebody built rules for some of the other unique elements of Eberron (Artifice, Psionics, etc)?

I'd appreciate any resources out there, or being pointed towards other people working on developing this material.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone, Haunted here.

I updated V5.0 GkV2.0. I think the changes are big enough to justify a major version update. I do not own neither the contents nor the works of previous authors.

Change log:

• Added all talents from Embers of the Imperium
• Added formatting guides for future reference
• Added Greyknight74 and myself as authors
• Altered spacing, added page breaks where needed
• Difficulties, Skill and Characteristics should now be written in bold consistently

Genesys Talents Expanded V6.0.pdf

You can also download the .docx and the .ttf as a zip file. You need to have the TTF installed on your machine to export your changes as PDF properly.

Genesys Talents Expanded V6.0.zip

Any comments & feedback appreciated.

Haunted

Apologies if this has been asked or if I missed it in the book. If I did, kindly direct me to the post or the page where I this can be found.

1. When these symbols appear on a players roll, who gets to decide on which effect is used, the GM or the player that rolled them? Can other players pitch in? Can the player choose not to use the good and the bad symbols? What if it's the GM's dice roll (the npcs are the ones doing the roll), can the GM just not spend the bad rolls?
2. Is the effect with the most number or symbol always to be used first? If I get 4 advantages, do I always need to (or am required) use the 4-advantage effect?
3. If number 2 is false, how many times can I use the effect? If I got 4 advantages, can I use the 1 advantage effect 4 times?
4. If the weapon has a critical effect, does it use the advantage symbol as well? So, if the weapon as critical 2, I need 2 advantages for it to take effect and I got 2 advantages on my roll, I can't spend them for effects anymore?
5. Maybe we just need to get used to this but, the tables of effects. This game seems to have a lot of them and it feels like things bog down due to use constantly looking at them for the results. This is normal for this game?

Thanks for the answers guys!

Here is a link to what I've made so far.

This originally started as a "lemme get my shit together" for a solo campaign as I've got stuff strewn all about and weapon profiles that are haphazard as hell. Figured I'm taking a break from playing and just collecting, sorting and all of that. Got like half of my stuff onto a spreadsheat, went hmmmm..... I'm halfway to Helldivers, and they got some stuff I've been missing. Soooo, just kinda dived into it.

Anyway, if you play, I took short cut route. I came up with some basic weapon profiles and added in weapon mods to get the rest plus extras. Still working on adversaries and actual layout, but figured I'd share what I got so far. Very, very much still a work in progress. I've been half ass updating it every couple of days for the past two months. Enjoy!

(PS, if anyone knows anything about actual layout and design, feel free to hit me up if you wanna collab on making an actual published supplement a la Starcraft hack)

I'll keep it fairly brief. People have been going missing in various cities and towns across the local city states and the one of the lords heired a group of freelancers (the players) to find out what is happening and deal with the problem.

They have managed to follow the trail to a small village about three days from the Rime before the trail runs cold.

So what is actually happening is that a Draugr Jarl is seeking to expand beyond his frozen waste in the Mists and he sent one of his mages to do something to make it happen. The agent is Sigrun and she has overtaken the local chapel and corrupted it to her own ends. She killed the priests and raised them as draugr (or Revenants literally meaning returned). The missing people are being shipped here and killed in dishonorable ways so that their souls are sent to Hel before being allowed to return as a dark twisted version of themselves. all the extra undead are being hidden in a tunnel network beneath the chapel.

Now being a town there are the following general purpose tradesman present, Blacksmith, Leatherworker, Seamstress, Baker, Carpenter

Since its a town there would also be a Mayor and with local farms a miller as well.

What are some things the local townsfolk may have noticed or find suspicious that they may be willing to share? (travelers are great sources of news and gossip of foreign lands)

If you're going or might be thinking about going to PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia this December 6-8th, be sure to check out the EDGE Studio area where myself and a few other Genesys RPG Community folk will be running games. You can play the Twilight Imperium War for the Throne prelude adventure, Inspection Tour. There's also some good games being run as well. https://unplugged.paxsite.com/en-us/schedule.html?search=edge%20RPGs

I'm looking to run a pokemon mystery dungeon campaign for some friends and I've been looking through systems. I hate the pokeroll ttrpg, but it's all anyone would suggest to me. Have any of you used Genesys for this/are there any resources anyone can point me towards? Or at least, give some guidance so I could make something?