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FFG announces Generic System "Genesys"

RollPlay: General & Archives
#1

[I’m only about 98% sure this is the correct forum, so feel free to adjust if necessary.]

So. yesterday Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) announced they’re going to release a generic system based on their narrative dice later in the year. For those of you that do not know, the narrative dice are the ones used in the Star Wars RPG [see Balance of Power], minus the Force die, that allow a roll to e.g. succeed at a cost or fail with benefits.

The CRB is going to include examples(?) for the genres Fantasy, Steampunk, Weird War (something akin to Alternate History), Modern Day and Science Fiction (with Android (Netrunner) as an example). Supplementals are going to add more examples and genres (and presumably also expand on them).

Personally, I was sort of suprised to see it - even though in hindsight it is very obviously a good move to get away from Licenses for FFG (see Warhammer [both Fantasy and 40k] for example)

What do you guys think?

#3

Hopefully they put out a supplement that covers absolutely-definitely-generic dark sci-fantasy that could or could not be described as grim. And dark. With power armour.

More seriously though: I’d be very excited for a full-blown Android RPG, fingers crossed they have the room in the license to put something out.

#5

GW works on trademarks, not copyrights. So in order for them to give out a cease and desist, it would have to basically be a case of “we are copying everything detail for detail”. That’s what got Chapterhouse and everyone else slammed.

There’s also the fact that you are basically legally obligated to defend your IP or you could risk losing it.

So FFG could do like Starcraft and have Space Marines that were based on “the” Space Marines and then just change a few minor details and be okay.

If it was a copyright, it’d be a different story, but instead its a trademark. So when someone gets a cease and desist for a trademark, it’s usually because they deserve it or “great minds think very alike.”

#6

FFG always use the strange dice, I guess it’s to force players to buy the dice or the game. TBH I haven’t gotten stuck in any of the FFG games even tho I have tried them. But we’ll see what Genesys gives us.

#7

That is their business model, after all, in pretty much all of their products - want to run a Netrunner deck with 3 San San City cards in it? Well that’ll be 3 core sets for you!

There’s money in there those long tails.

#8

I must say i’m not a huge fan of this. While i like the special dice for SW rpg as it makes it feel somewhat special and they drive more to cinematic play rather than just result of one die, the system is a complete clusterfuck. For a generic game system the calculation of different advantage and disadvantages from various skills from multiple characters, actions that happened before and environmental effects… it’s just too much of an hassle.

I foresee the supplement products being the crucial factor. If they can pump out supplemental products with good themes, that can then be utilized to play for example 40k games, they might have a chance. We might see some licensed material that hasn’t been in an official rpg release ever before.