This is probably where I am most uneasy. This out-of-character approach of the players. I already understand that it's not a flaw of this game, it's a feature and probably a very good one for many but still it makes my head spin a little bit. I will definitely discuss all the new matter with my players at the first convenient occasion and I think we will give it a try ... and based on that experience we will discuss what to keep and what to omit.

The best pieces of advice I can give if you're going to go for it and try the system out are as follows:

Start the players at the LOWEST power level. While being a full wizard is cool and all, for a first time game the less complex a character is mechanically the better they'll grasp the system.

Try it RaW (or as close as possible) for a few sessions (I recomend 4 to 6) before you go fiddling with houserules, give it a chance.

Let your players know ahead of time and introduce stuff gradually. Aspects and the dice mechanics first, then manuvers and blocks as actions, then consequences, then concession. But be sure to tell them "hey there are some rules I will introduce later that may be applicable before I introduce them, don't freak out."

Make the firse campaign shorter and use it as a trial run. If ya'll like it gear up for a longer game. If not then maybe it's not the right game for your table.

Uh, guys, what exactly is RaW?
Very interesting discussion otherwise. I'm opting either for "concessions should hurt substantially" or for not using them at all. I understand them as an element that allows for PCs to escape potentially lethal situations and create cinematic events but I'd rather go with believable story and consistence. This concession concept reminds me of the old Deus-Ex-Machina business in ancient theatre plays... In short: If the player can come up with something creative, believable and hurting his character at the same time, ok I'm in. Otherwise it's the winning party's decision.

You always have to be smart with concessions. Those mooks the BBEG hired may think twice on if it's worth dying for the pay they got when the PC's respond with overwhelming force. I've always read the concession rules as taking the character into account. If the PC's try to ambush an arms dealer amd are then counter ambushed, conceding and surrendering should always be a viable option. You see it all the time in movies and books. Dresden Files is at it's core a pulp inspired game.

*forgive any spelling or grammar errors, I'm typing this out on my phone*

Concessions (and being taken out, or stressed out as I call it) are purely a matter of determining who has naration rights.

For instance: when a PC decides to concede they have LOST, plain and simple. However, they get to say how and why they are no longer in the conflict and that is the crucial thing. In a physical conflict the easiest way of narrating this is for them to say "in the confusion of the battle I slip away to safety". In a social or mental things get a little more complex and it's here my players always draw a blank. For social I always suggest a "turn the other cheek" scinario for the PC concession. Something like "I walk/storm/run out of the room, clearly clearly unhappy, with my tail between my legs" or something to that effect. And mental could be "I curl up into a ball on the floor with a glazed expression" If consequences were taken use them for narration ideas.

For NPC's I generally go with the "villan escapes to fight another day" or if they're just mooks "I surrender"

Being taken out, or stressing out as I put it. Means the winner of the conflict gets narration rights. If you want to be brutal, you can have the loser just bleed out while unconscious. But I always find capture WAY more interesting. You cancombo it with the villan conceding to have him get away with the party member that was unconscious.

Slendy Stats

That is quite simply perfect!

Either that or a Phobophage (spelling?) Were my initial thoughts especially with the connection to forests and child abduction/stalking screams fay to me.

But then again there's the idea that the more you know about him, the stronger, more persistant in it's stalking of you, or the stronger of a bond to you it has maybe would hint at an outsider. If not a full outsider, then maybe an agent of the outsiders? Reminds me a little of He Who Walks Behind in a way.

So this group has had 4 more sessions now and they all seem to be digging the
system.

The following is a quick rundown of the events of the past few sessions. I plan to do a proper writeup of this campaign as it goes, either in a seperate thread or a blog of some sort.

Session 2:
Having signed on as on call privateers/smugglars the party heads back to the spaceport. As they get closer they see a Victory class Star Destroyer in low orbit over the spaceport, blockading all space traffic. They are told to "wait for their signal" before they make their way into the spaceport concorse.

Their "signal" comes as a flight of Y-wings and Z-95 headhgunters launches a volley of missiles at the Victory class Star Destroyer. Panic erupts in the spaceport and it's surrounding cit. The PC's use the panic to make their way towards their landing pad. As they get there they find a team of imperial engineers and officers casing the ship and documenting the contents. By this point the storm that was brewing begins and rain falls in buckets over the landing pad.

The PC's take out the imperials with a little help (the mandalorian player having been compelled to be on planet looking for recruits for his clan). In the confusion making an escape is easy, and they make for deep space.

Session 3:
The PC's make for Nar Shaadda in Hutt Space as a place to lay low for a while.
In the inerum the smuggler had looked over the datapad lifted from the dead officers listing off their cargo. Noticing that they foind the holocrons and documented and transmitted the data to his superiors the PCdecide to hole up for a few weeks.

The Chiss PC decides he wants to try and clear his name for the bombing of a state building on Corellia (part of his backstorey). What better way to do that than collecting your OWN bounty? So he tracks down another Chiss on planet (chiss are VERY rare in the greater galaxy). This particular chiss is on a slave transport making a pitstop before delivering it's slave cargo to the planet below, Nal Hutta (Nar Shaadda is Nal Hutta's moon). This chiss is to be brought to public auction on the planet, but our PC's have other plans. The Chiss PC decides to buy this person from the slaver then elaboratly stage his death, turning in the slave's corpse as his own. The Smuggler takes some Stormtrooper armor he scavanged from the previous session and modifies it to make it look like a bounty hunter's getup.

The transaction goes off and the PC's spend a few days making the body look "convincing" applying the appropriate bruises and scraps (the poor fellow has to be alive for the bruising to happen right...)

After a few days the smuggler dons his Bounty Hunter getup and marches the poor guy out to a crouded walkway, tells him to run and cuts his bonds. The guy runs, not needing to be told twice, and is promptly shot in the back by our Chiss PC sniping from a rooftop. The "Bounty Hunter" then wades through the crowd brandishing his blaster, and making a fuss out of "only getting to collect for dead now".

The body is turned in at the local Bounty Hunter's Guild office, and credits are transferred. Just before session end they get a call from their Chandrillan contact...

More to come.

So I finally got to run my hack this past thirsday. Overall it went pretty well.
My players are as follows:
A Rattataki Mandalorian Mercenary
A Trandoshan ex-mandalorian bounty hunter
A Human force sensitive smuggler
A Chiss Assassin
And a Gungan Mercenary

The 2 mandalorian characters ended up missing the first play session

I started them off in a very Firefly fashion, scavanging. Spicifically they were scavanging the dead hulks of clone wars vessels orbiting the site of a major battle.

Everything is going fine untill an Imperial Interdictor cruiser jumps into the system. I compell the smugglar's "wanted by the empire" aspect. I tell him that he needs to cut and run, ASAP. He refused and paid me off, he wanted to attempt to hide in the debris field. He tells the Gungan and the Chiss to man the turrets of their YT-2400 named the Spacer's Wife. The interdictor launches fighters 2 squadrens of TIE/n (base TIE Fighters) and 1 squadron of TIE/b (TIE Bombers) to sweep the field.

The Spacer's Wife blazes to life and looks like it's going to try to escape, I hand out a fate point as the TIE squadrons all converge on the ship and the comm squaks to life with "Corellian Transport Spacer's Wife, this is the Imperial Interdictor Asp. Ower down your engined and prepare to be boarded. Failure to comply will result in the destruction of your vessel." I compell the 2 on the guns to open up by compelling the chiss's trouble of "hot headed", and the Gungan's trouble of "unconceiled hatred for the empire", they both accept and open fire on the fighters.

I now treat the conflict like a cat and mouse game. And I'm rolling the TIE's as 3 swarms at +2 blasters and pilot. The Spacer's Wife takes a big hit from the concussion missiles launched by the bombers and the pilot marks down "rear shield down" as a consequence on his ship's sheet ( I treat the ship almost as a separate character. It has some skils on its own from the rudamentary onboard droid brain that does the hyper jump calculations and diagnostics. It also has a shields, hull, and components stress track. Hull is untouched untill shields are down, and components are for Ion weapon damage. Ion weapons do nopt damage a ship, they simpley overload the systems and disable the vessel)

A few more rolls later and the pilot loses the fighters in the field, he them cuts all power but life support and goes dark while clamped to the side of a derelict ship.

They take this time to inspect what they found on their scavanging. They had brought aboard what they discover are priceless artifacts from various worlds ravaged by the clone wars that ended 16 years ago. As the smugglar goes to open the last crate he gets a vision. (I use the rules for the sight for this vision and him interperating it correctly. He also has basically the sight which I have renamed Sense, it's a force ability.) He sees the spinning disk of the galaxy as a darkness begins to engulf it. One pin prick of light winks out. The drkness spreads until it covers all of the known galaxy. Then a few points of brilliant blue light erupt from the darkness and begin to push back the darkness.

As he opens that last crate they find it's filled with holocrons, both Jedi and Sith. And a single lightsaber. He tries to activate it but it doesn't ignite.

The chiss then rolls contacts to see if he knows someone to offload this stuff on for as many credits as they could get. He brings up an uncle that deals in fine art and I propose he is on Chandrilla a world near the core of the galaxy.

They get there and dock without an issue. As they're making their way through the spaceport bazzar they hear a large spaceship break atmosphere and make its way to the spaceport as a storm begins to roll in.

They meet up with the uncle and they all add an aspect to their sheets "a deal with the art dealer" after they've negotiated an acceptable deal.

On their way back to their ship to begin offloading their cargo they narrowly avoid running into an Imperial patrol questioning shop owners and civilians. They also notice a lot of police speeder traffic over the spaceport.

As they ponder a good way to get back to their ship they are jumped from behind and dragged through a shop atall and into a warehouse. I compelled them each in various ways to either fight the m off of them or go with the flow depending on aspects.

Eventually they come face to face with the beings that jumped them. After some exposition it is revealed that they are a group of resistance fighters, and their leader wants to speek to the 3 players. They agree to follow them through a network of tunnels leading under the spaceport and out of the city into the rural areas surrounding the city.

They come to a small farm with a crop ready for harvest. They are lead to a large rickety looking toolshed as they open the door it is revealed to be reinforced unside and insulated and all around them are viewscreens and computer systems buzzing as a handfull of beings are monitoring the systems. They are introduced to the resistance cell leader, a human female, and the Senator of the Planet. She wished to make a deal. (Some of the players had worked with resistance cells in the past) She wishes to hire the crew as freelance privateers ans smugglars if they accept she will assist in getting their ship off planet and out of impound.

They accept and I tell them all to jot down "on call for the Chandrilla Resistance" as an aspect on their sheets.


Overall they all seem to be having a blast, and the players are grasping the concept of manuvers and aspects pretty well. We play every thursday, so I'll update as our sessions go on.

Check out the side bar ("The dark powers are always willing to help") on YS290. It talks about an external sponsor lending power (in the form of a fate point, good for two shifts of effect) in exchange for a future favor (in the form of a compel). In the case of star wars, you would replace the external sponsor with the dark side and the favor with some sort of compel to their darker nature. It works great for a well defined and temporary consequence (occasional slips and the like), while the aspect change and Lawbreaker powers are good for more permanent altering. I always felt the attitude made more sense for the dark side too, giving you more immediate power at a cost (which is always what the dark side is about, right?).

Oook. I see what you're getting at. That is definitely the best way to do it I think.