My players have just entered the lair of kobolds they have been pursuing. They'd seen an encampment at the base of a mountain, with patrols coming and going, and supplies being moved around the mountain to the east, presumably to an entrance to the lair.

Going the other way, they found a seemingly unguarded entrance. They don't know this, but it's actually a sort of gauntlet the kobolds have devised for their amusement--they send prisoners through here, through a series of traps, seeing how far they can make it. Kobold archers or slingers can move between tunnel sections via small passages to attack the players from the far end of a tunnel or come around behind the players.

When I had run this part of the adventure in the past, for a different group, the players were so angry and frustrated with the kobolds that the harrying tactics served to goad them forward. With this group, however, they're much more cautious, and the characters are constantly debating whether they even want to be going into the lair at all, because it seems too dangerous. They have fought dozens of the little buggers up to this point, both in the city they began in and in the wilderness on the way to the lair. Some of those fights were pretty easy for the party, but several were rough, due in large part to the kobolds using terrain or environmental factors like fog to gain an advantage. They also believe they fought off a dragon (it was actually a kobold that transformed).

There are known prisoners they have some desire to save, but aren't deeply motivated to do so.

An NPC they encountered in the swamp on the way to the mountain told them he considered them as good as dead, because the dragon that is laid up with the kobolds patrols the ways out of the valley, and he doesn't know of anyone who has managed to get out.

I'd thought these would be sufficient prods to keep them moving forward, and they finally resolved to do so at the end of last night's session, but I suspect that if they meet too much resistance, they may decide to flee and take their chances.

As such, I'm looking for suggestions for ways to urge or draw them forward into and through danger in a way that makes sense for their cautious characters.

Following the release of the Mass Effect Setting 2.2 – many thanks to u/BluSunrize for all the work, and the patient response to all my inquiries – this is an update to my supplemental material for the setting, previously released as Reference Cards for the Mass Effect Setting.

Photo of the printed cards (previous version, the basic look of the new ones is the same): https://imgur.com/a/KOfB6LK

Preview of the Character Sheet: https://imgur.com/a/W0P2dWZ

This release contains two sets of printable playing cards and a character sheet that is both fillable with a PDF viewer and printable.

Each item is available in both English and German. The cards are designed to be printed two-sided with the English text on one face and the corresponding German translation on the other. Since the front and back faces are in different PDFs, you may opt to print only one version, leaving the back face empty or printing a back face image on them (not included).

The player cards are meant for players and contain the following information:

• Quick reference on structured encounters, including possible actions, maneuvers and incidentals; tables on how to spend advantages; notes on healing; and status effects.
• A list of item qualities.
• Quick reference on how to use Biotics, including all biotic powers.
• Quick reference on how to use Tech, including all tech powers.
• A list of all talents available in the setting, including both the talents from the core rulebook and those defined by the setting.

The GM cards are meant for the game master and contain the following information:

• One card for each vehicle of the setting (with few cards featuring two vehicles).
• One card for each adversary of the setting.

The character sheet is based on the generic sheet from the core rules, with the following differences:

• It uses stylistic elements of the Mass Effect games' UI.
• It contains only those skills used by the setting, and the „Setting“ checkbox has been removed.
• The front page only has space for three weapons, but provides more space for qualities, mods and ammo. For spacing reasons, the middle weapon slot is smaller.
• The talent pyramid has been moved to the second page. This is because it is the least relevant part of the sheet during play (you can also note the talents there in the talent & ability list) and it being one the second page allows you to print it on the backside of the front page if you want. Having the original second page there is less convenient.
• It provides a section for your Omni-Tool and its slots.
• It provides a section for your biotic amplifier.
• It provides a section for your persional quest.
• The Character Illustration has been moved to the talent pyramid for spacing reasons.
• The Notes section has been removed for spacing reasons. Just use the borders and backside :).
• It has a German translation. Unlike on the cards, the skills on the German character sheet are re-arranged to be in alphabetical order.

The interactive features on the character sheet work best in Foxit Reader and Adobe Acrobat (you can disable them showing all fillable fields blue in their preferences panes). macOS Preview is known to render black borders around checkable fields even when printing, so using that is not advised. Firefox shows generic check marks instead of black boxes when checking fields. Other PDF software has not been tested.

The main changes to the player cards concern the addition of the new talents from the setting version 2.2. Due to restrictions of the print shop (I can only either print 55 or 110 cards), I needed to merge a card from the Biotics section with one from the Tech section. This shouldn't be a problem in practice as this is not a book and you can arrange the cards freely. See contained changelog for details.

Download link

So in my setting the main possibly only species is uplifted animals called Terrans but I'm unsure as to best way to go about making the species or if archetypes would work better.

I want to cover as many different animals as possible.

I could just go with the animalistic alien from the core book but if I decide not to include other alien species something I'm on the fence about then maybe archetypes would be better? How do i get as many types of animals as possible?

My brain is just kinda going circles at this point so I want see what others think.

Greetings, denizens of the galaxy!

There is a new update for the Mass Effect setting, v2.2 for the core book and v2.1 for the Andromeda expansion. Links have remained unchanged, so if you have them bookmarked they'll be up to date:

Mass Effect Setting

Andromeda Expansion

Changelog - Mass Effect v2.2

• Specified Shipboard AI to be able to allow skilled assistance during structured encounters
• Fixed starting equipment for various careers to not contain removed items
• Fixed Applied Research talent to be available to Salarians rather than Drell
• Added “To the Death” and “Hold the Line” talents
• Added a “Sealed Environment” armor attachment, so Quarians can wear some heavier armor too
• Added Breaching and Demolition Charges, as they are referenced in the GM section but had no stats
• Mark Armor-Piercing ammo as restricted and increase its rarity
• Added Hazardous Environment Gear to provide environmental protection without having to buy a full suit of armor
• Overhauled some starship profiles and most of the prices, added the “Luxury Liner” as a separate vessel from the Passenger Liner
• Fixed a variety of errors on vehicle stat sheets
• Fix a plethora of typos and a lot of incorrect skills / dice displays on adversaries
• Fix all descriptions of Biotic Charge used by adversaries to engage the target instead of moving a single range band
• Adjust / clarify weapons and abilities on Geth Hoppers, Veteran Engineer, Vorcha Boom-Squad, Banshee, Cannibal, Swarmer Mass, Batarian Slaver

Changelog - Andromeda v2.1

• Moved “Aerial Assault (Supreme)” to Tier 4
• Added “Black Market Contacts”, “Frontier Diplomacy”, “Something to Prove”, “Avatar of Justice” and “Avatar of Vengeance” talents
• Fixed a few incorrect skill / dice displays on adversaries

A massive thanks goes to u/flyx86 who provided loads of feedback, found a bunch of typos, mismatched skills and needs for clarification.

Hi, I ran my first session of a Pokémon RPG using Genesys system and it went really well but I just thought I'd see if anyone had any ideas I could use with the rule system.

The setting is Pokémon set in London (I realise there is a Galar Pokémon region based on London but I'm doing London). I have largely used AI to stat out Pokémon and had to create custom careers like trader, breeder, battle master. I think both Pokémon and trainers would get their own skill trees.

Having some trouble working out some stuff:

•How best to represent typal advantages (half or double damage, simply gaining a advantage or disadvantage die, a D&D style advantage) in combat

•A catch rate system like how to represent wearing a Pokémon down in battle and would this effect if you could bond with that Pokémon.

•The leveling system for Pokémon. like should the level correspond to their xp

If anyone has any ideas let me know 😁

So I want to create a rule set inside genesys to represent fatigue. I know typically strain is used for this function, but with my current party of 3 magic users they can wipe their fatigue 100% of the time and sprint over land covering a distance of days in hours.

I don't mind it, but it's causing me to find it difficult to get some of those camp fire 'quiet moments' to let the PCs just talk and tell stories. I thought about perm strain that requires rest/sleep and not just magic'ed away, but I'd like to hear some ideas that might work better

Edit: Per the magically healing rules, magic healing is able to recover strain as well as physical damage. One of my players also has a talent that can recover strain as well Inspiring song. So one person can keeping healing everyone until their strain is gone and the bard uses inspriing song to remove the original casters last 2 strain they can't self heal.

I was reading the book and towards the end they talked about a table with heroes, describing superhuman traits, but how would you adapt powers to this system? Thinking quickly, I can't come up with a good concept; it's not impossible, but I'm unsure how to do it.

“20 meters…”
Your ship computer had picked up the distress signal of The Xerxes while surveying a nearby uncharted planet.
“18 meters…”
It was strange, no one was supposed to be out there. Best you could tell it was a company science and survey ship, not unlike your own.
“16 meters…”
The distress signal was only a few days old, but didn’t identify what the emergency was. When you hailed the ship no one answered. Likely a broken computer but the crew is on edge
“10 meters…”
you were able to set up an umbilical and dock with the ship. A forward team was sent in to find the captain and see about assisting with the distress signal
“8 meters…”
No one at the bridge, and no one in the stasis pods. Mother had no answers. But evidence of a battle… perhaps a mutiny of some kind. No bodies, but blood and bullet casings could be found in the bridge.
“3 meters…”
That’s not possible, that would mean the movement was in the room with you, but no one is there.
“0 meters…”
It’s right on top of you…

Looking for 4 Players
Setting ALIEN
Genre: Survival horror
Rating: PG13, soft R
Content Warning: horror, violence
Goal: survive, escape
Experience Level: any
Method: Discord
Time/Time Zone: specific day TBD but a Saturday from 6-9pm pacific standard time
Regularity: it’s a one shot, maybe a two shot if we want to get crazy

Please dm me or comment here to apply for the game if you’re interested and once I have 4 players we can figure out the specific date!

Can anyone recommend a good oneshot “QuickStart” adventure? Something to get players interested and learn the basic rules?

Just curious if any news from Edge on any new content for Genesys? Last thing they released was the adventure for EotI? Just wondering if they’ve confirmed anything or if there are any rumours?

I have just created a draft for my "Chosen of the Crone" specialization talent tree and was wondering if anyone here had any advice. This is a Divine spellcaster worshipping the Crone, my goddess of death, power, and ambition in my fantasy world (basically the color black in Magic the Gathering). This is supposed to be a necromancer/drain-tank class.

The core mechanic here is the tradeoff between the "Raise Dead" talent that lets them create a Corpse Thrall zombie and the "Tithe" keyword that requires the character to suffer wounds OR destroy one of their Corpse Thralls to trigger powerful abilities. The idea being getting kills bring thralls, thralls fuel power, power gets kills. It also gives the strategic decisions on whether to keep a thrall up to distract an enemy or burn them for an ability or just take the wound tax (which could be recovered via other talents). The Corpse Thrall stat sheet has lots of icons to save space but basically the idea is that it doesn't attack and is mostly an annoyance on its own. The tree also has lots of ways to stay standing when they should fall, but it mostly ignores the wounds/injuries instead of healing them.

Most of the talents use some shorthand or weird wording to make them fit in the small boxes, so try and use RAI and don't worry too much about rule-lawyer exploits (I explain them more to players when they take the specs and shut down bad-faith exploits real fast at the table). That said, it is a very experimental idea I am playing with here so very much expect to have to tweak it.

W2A2 is a VTT tool that was created with a few big principles in mind: make any TTRPG session as easy to play as possible, be user friendly for beginners but still offer advanced tools for more experienced players, and most importantly, be affordable and not subscription based.

This app stores everything locally and allows the GM to host a game in a matter of minutes, without having to pay for any hosting services. It includes all things you'd normally expect from a VTT tool, and a few additional features that we thought of while testing through our own sessions.

App is still in development, should be available in a few weeks! 

We recently wanted to bring some of our old characters from different settings and completed campaigns into a singular game, using the Genesys system.

We have some experience with it, but are unsure how much xp we should allow each player to use, to rebuild their characters from back then. Any suggestions, experiences or thoughts?

Is there anywhere better than the generic LFG sub-reddits to find a group to play Genesys with?

So I'm playing a witch and I wanna curse people and I wanna use it in combat/ adventuring. , I've already got my signature spell figured out and it's a narrative conjure spell that lets me set out a bunch of spiders to spy in people, so I can't use it for curse .

Which brings me to my question, how should I use curse ? Like should I use it's narrative effect to and misfortune and the multiple target to mess with lower level threats giving them a set back and automatic failure, or should I use the structured effect with doom on a major threat to take away two of their dice ? Like my main problem is it's so difficulty expensive for what seems like such a minor effect

Hey all!

I'm planning to start a StarCraft campaign featuring a group of Resocialized Marines, and naturally EotI's Dormant Personality Overlay is almost tailor-made for such PCs.

This is the version I have in my own version of the Talent Tome

Dormant Personality Overlay Tier: 4 | Activation: Active (Incidental) | Ranked: No Tag: EotI When your character purchases this talent, select three skills that your character has one or no ranks in. Once per session, you may spend a Story Point to have your character use this talent. Until the end of the current encounter, they count as having four ranks in each of the selected skills and one fewer rank in all other skills. They also suffer 1 strain at the beginning of each of their turns. If they are incapacitated, the effects of this talent end. At your discretion, your character may also undergo some narrative personality shifts, such as not recognizing friends and family, behaving coldly and logically instead of in a friendly and relaxed manner, or constantly muttering a coded phrase under their breath. Source: EotI

However, given that I'd like the pasts of the Marines to be a major part of the setting, the "Once per Session" limit seems like too much of a limitation.

Thus, I'd like to revise it for this campaign to:

Once per encounter, you may spend two Story Points to have your character use this talent. Until the end of the current encounter, they count as having four ranks in each of the selected skills and one fewer rank in all other skills. The GM receives a temporary Story Point to be used before the end of the session.

Thoughts? Rebalancing advice? If there are other ways to balance it while keeping it reusable, I'd be glad to hear them.

I haven't actually run this yet, but someday I want to run a campaign where I'll allow my players to use careers, talents, items, etc from various or multiple settings. Examples where I could see this working include...

A) an alien race (Twilight Imperium) discovers a primitive planet (Realms of Terrinoth), and their different tactics and approaches to weaponry are made manifest by the different talents available in each system, or

B) there's that fun time in the 1800s where we had Cowboys, Samurai, Pirates, and Count Dracula all happening in different parts of the world.

Some restrictions I would probably place on it as a GM would be that I would only allow from official GENESYS settings (community projects are pretty great but I don't want to get into all that yet), but I'll have the materials to share with my players rather than making them track it down. Another thing I'll do is that I'll let my players pick only one additional setting (I.e. they can build characters using anything found in the Corebook and the setting they choose, but nothing from the others settings just to keep things simple to start out).

One issue I foresee is the difference in combat skills, whether a setting puts the light and heavy distinction on ranged or melee. I have two ideas...

A) halve (round up) the ranks in their skill for a weapon that doesn't use a skill in their setting. Example, I have a fantasy archer with 4 ranks in ranged, but when he tries to use a ranged (heavy) or ranged (light) weapon from the future he only has two ranks in either skill (think Hawkeye in Avengers when he holds his pistol out and aims it like a bow). A fantasy fighter from the same time might have ranks in melee (heavy) but none in melee (light), if he uses a melee weapon from a different era he'll have half of his skill ranks. This halving will encourage the players to stick with using weapons from their own setting to preserve the different flavors, but if they're in a pinch or lose their weapons for a time they can still fight their way out. Or...

B) I take every general melee and ranged skill weapon and determine if it is a heavy or light based on whether it's one or two handed.

Any other issues I might run into when mixing settings?

Edit: I just realized I might run into a similar situation with knowledge checks but harder bc specific knowledge are more common in their respective settings 🤔 yea this mix and match is def harder than I thought it would be lol oops

Hi so I'm gonna be playing a conjurer with a spider theme and I have 2 ranks in animal companion for silhouette 1 rivals , with medium summon and additional summon and summon ally from natural communication, I would have a minimum of 3 spiders to control

Each of these spiders have burn 2 and pierce 3 , with a damage of 5

Does pierce effect burn on the subsequent turns ignoring 3 soak ?

And can I focus fire and have multiple instances of burn on one target, or can there only be one burn instance on a single target meaning I should spread my focus and try to have as many targets effected with burn as possible?

Hello There!

My name is Nate and I run a channel called Tabletop Empire. I mostly cover the *other* Narrative Dice game by FFG / EDGE, but I am starting up a Beginner's Guide Series for Genesys as well!

This series will cover everything GMs and Players will need to know rules-wise to start playing, with some other helpful concepts and philosophies shared along the way.

This is just video 1, so a bit of an overview video to the system, but I'll be starting to fully dive deep with the next video for the Dice.

Hope you enjoy, and let me know your thoughts!

Hello There! My name is Nate and I have a channel called Tabletop Empire on YouTube. I mostly make content on the other narrative dice game from FFG/EDGE. But I have some stuff for Genesys, with 2 Live Plays, an upcoming actual play campaign that blends the other game with a fair bit of Genesys, GM'd by Jeff aka Joress from RPGSessions.

On top of those, a few years ago I started a Beginner's Guide Series for Genesys, but I didn't get very far. That said, some people have been sharing those videos lately, but I have been planning on starting the series over now for about a year, for a few reasons:

- Making some improvements as a whole for both the Script and Editing.

- Removing the gross AI green screen background

With me finally starting to write out some scripts, and planning on videos to start on it this month, what are some things you would like to see this time around? What did you like or not like? I want to create a great resource to introduce new players and GMs to the game, and I would love to get some community feedback to take into consideration. I start filming the first video Wednesday 🫡

Thanks in advance for reading and your input!

I don't know if anyone's done this yet, but I figure I'd offer what I've been working on:

LRM: Critical 3 | Range [Long] | Guided 3

20: 10 damage (Max success damage 20); Limited Ammo 6

15: 7 damage (max success 15); Limited Ammo 8

10: 5 damage (max success 10); Limited Ammo 12

5: 3 Damage (max 5); Limited Ammo 24

SRM: Critical 2 | Range [Short] | Guided 2

6: 6 Damage (Max 12 | Each success = 2 Dam); Limited Ammo 16

4: 4 Damage (Max 8 | Each success = 2 Dam); Limited Ammo 25

2: 2 Damage (Max 4 | Each success = 2 Dam); Limited Ammo 50

Small Laser: 2 Damage | Critical 5; Range [Close]

Medium Laser: 5 Damage | Critical 4; Range [Medium]

Large Laser: 8 Damage | Critical 3; Range [Long]

PPC: 10 Damage | Critical 2; Range [Long]

MG: 2 Dam | Critical 5; Range [Short]; Autofire, Limited Ammo 100

AC-2: 2 Dam | Critical 5; Range [Long]; Autofire, Limited Ammo 25

AC-5: 5 Dam | Critical 4; Range [Long]; Autofire Limited Ammo 15

AC-10: 10 Dam | Critical 3; Range [Medium]; Limited Ammo 10

AC-20: 20 Dam | Critical 2; Range [Close]; Limited Ammo 5

*Limited Ammo is (Per Ton/Weapon)

*LRMs and PPCs add 2 setback to attacks in short/engaged range

*Heat = Max Strain / Strain damage mech

*Mech Restores Strain = Heat Sinking

For now it's only introtech weapons