“Unforeseeable circumstances that prevent someone from fulfilling a contract.” That’s one of the legal definitions of force majeure, and I can think of a few examples. Getting discovered by a dark figure known as Tenth Brother might prevent you from fulfilling a work contract, or the ‘contract’ that is your prison sentence. An “irresistible compulsion or greater force” is another definition, and an offer you can’t refuse to retrieve an artifact from a strange wasteland certainly fits the bill. However, that second definition is also a pretty good description of the reasons Why You Should Listen to the podcast known as Force Majeure. You know how it goes: a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…
Sometimes a tank or a fighter jet just won’t do the trick. Sometimes, the best way to deal with a problem is a big, stompy mecha. However, while life is finally returning to Genesys proper with EDGE Studios announcing their upcoming Twilight Imperium supplement, if you want to be jumping in the cockpit with the Narrative Dice System running the show you’ve been dealing with homegrown material. Now, though, there’s an offering on the Foundry itself which just might turn the tide of your own personal giant robot war. From mecha creation to pilot recruitment, lets head to the hangar to check out Mechasys from Studio 404 Games!
Let’s be blunt: things have been very quiet on the Genesys front lately. The switch from Fantasy Flight Games to EDGE Studio has not exactly hit the ground running, although in fairness a lot of that can be attributed to disruption caused by the pandemic. Still, that means that aside from promises and rumors – good money says Twilight Imperium will be the next IP tapped for the system – there’s been nothing coming out . . . except what’s found in the Genesys Foundry.
Player characters often find themselves interacting with much larger groups, organizations, and factions – but how does a character actually gain prestige and support in such groups? Sure, many games can handle that narratively, but what if you want something crunchier? Out of the Foundry and the mind of FFG-veteran Keith Ryan Kappel comes Factions 1, a Faction Talent Supplement for Genesys!
Back in November of 2017, Fantasy Flight Games released Genesys. Both Seamus and I wanted a fair shake at reviewing it, and in the process we learned why not to do two-part reviews. Still, a lot of people read it and we continued being excited for the generic version of the Star Wars RPG that many of us at Cannibal Halfing had spent a fair amount of time playing. Now, nearly three years later, it’s a perfect time to revisit the system. Asmodee, Fantasy Flight’s parent company, has reorganized their RPG development resources. In the near future new Asmodee-owned RPGs will be released from the new Edge Studio imprint, and based on a panel at GenCon 2020 this will include new Genesys material (the IP referenced there was Twilight Imperium). For now, though, the Asmodee RPG pipeline is on pause, at least until the last couple Legend of the Five Rings supplements enter distribution. On my personal end, I have finally both played and GMed games in Genesys, which means it’s a good time to give Genesys the In-Depth treatment.
In 2018, 25 years after the debut of Magic: The Gathering, Fantasy Flight Games released Keyforge, a game from Magic designer Richard Garfield. Keyforge is a hybrid between a trading card game like Magic and a living card game like Netrunner, which has no trading aspect and includes all the cards needed to play. Keyforge is sold in complete, playable decks, so the card trading and acquisition (and significant financial outlay) aspects are reduced, though not eliminated. In 2020, Fantasy Flight decided the Keyforge setting was strong enough to be the basis for the next setting book for the Genesys RPG. And in June of 2020, my copy of that book, Secrets of the Crucible, showed up on my doorstep. Time to take a look.
Every successful RPG must have a strong setting or a strong ruleset. When Fantasy Flight Games hit it out of the park with their trio of Star Wars RPGs, they clearly had a strong setting. As it turned out, though, the system was pretty solid too; the Narrative Dice System had been patched to tone down the excesses of WFRP 3e, resulting in a game that was a good balance between robust and quick, and added a good amount of narrative flair and interesting in-game decisions. It was so good that people were able to overlook the expensive proprietary dice. From Star Wars came Genesys, a generic RPG which truly begs the question of whether the Narrative Dice System can succeed on mechanics alone.
Sure, you could enlist and get issued a giant robot by your space military. Or you could be a traditionalist and just steal fall into the cockpit of the nearest mecha to start your adventure. Why trust some other engineer’s design, though? You’ll be making your own story, why not your own mecha to tell it with? Well if that’s what you want to do then you’re in luck, because that’s what we’re doing for one last G.E.N.E.S.Y.S. Mecha System Hack using the Genesys system from Fantasy Flight Games!
Ah, Mecha-Mooks. While the heroes and named villains of the piece get their shiny super prototypes and custom machines, the nameless grunts get bargain bin robots that might as well be made of cardboard with a jet fuel filling. Hey, just look at the OZ-06Ms Leo from Gundam Wing, the fandom would have you believe a stiff breeze causes one of those things to erupt in a fireball. But . . . when a named character hops in one, it still manages to accomplish something without dying instantly. So how do you get Mecha-Mooks to use in a Genesys Mecha game when the same machine can be used by the weakest of Minions and the most dreadful Nemesis? Once you’ve answered that question, how do you make the bad guys stand out from their goodie two shoes counterparts? Let’s find out in this latest System Hack for Mecha in Fantasy Flight Games’s Genesys! Continue reading System Hack: Genesys Mecha: Minions and Adversaries→
The day has come, and the second supplement for Fantasy Flight Games’ GenesysRPG is out! Shadow of the Beanstalk covers the Android setting, specifically focusing on New Angeles, the Beanstalk space elevator, and the Heinlein lunar colony. As an Android splatbook, the book works perfectly, giving a starting point for running games in the Android setting and tons of adversaries, locations, factions, and gear to flesh it out. If you look at the foreword, though, and at the Settings section of Genesys Core, it’s clear that this book is supposed to expand the Genesys toolkit to enable a wide range of science fiction settings. With three Star Wars games and the Worlds of Android book already in print, what does Shadow of the Beanstalk really provide to the Genesys ecosystem? Let’s take a look, chapter by chapter.
What Genesys Mecha has consisted of up to this point has been theorycrafting, thought processes, and building blocks. I’ve mulled over what I wanted this particular series to do, built some giant robots, designed some pilots, tweaked some rules here and there, and went back and altered things as other ideas developed. While different pieces have built off of one another, and even influenced changes in the ones that came before, they haven’t quite been properly tied together yet, until now. In this month’s System Hack for Genesys Mecha we’re talking character creation XP, starting mecha, tone, and logistics with some Campaign Setup!
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