SWRPG: Friction
Someone in a Facebook discussion brought up an idea that I immediately thought could apply to the new Star Wars RPG (the one with the funny dice).
In the old Top Secret S/I game, there was a supplemental rule called "Friction". Basically, certain things would accumulate points, and if that running total reached a certain number, something would turn up to complicate a mission. An agent's favorite gun might have a small value, an important contact might add a bit more just for being there, a dirty politician might add a bunch.
When the point total reached the critical value, whatever brought it there would be involved in the complication. "Old Painless" might have a hangfire (where a gun is triggered, but the bullet doesn't immediately come out); the contact might be under surveillance; the politician's info might have a factual error.
This got me thinking about using something similar in the Star Wars RPG. Basically, allow players to 'set aside' Threat dice results. This lets them treat their rolls as if they got better results than they actually rolled... but once they've built up enough Threats, a major complication gets added to the scenario.
The players will have the choice of tweaking fate a little bit in their favor, but at the risk of it turning around and biting back. Ideally, the GM would establish a number ahead of time without telling the players. Maybe write it down on something, then leave it on the table until it's time to reveal it. Perhaps treat it like how you get the Destiny Pool: roll a Force die for each player, and note the total number of pips rolled.
This would be different than the Destiny Pool, which GMs can choose to use as long as they have Dark Side points available. Instead, this would be misfortune the PCs brought on themselves.
This message was last updated by a moderator, as it was the wrong forum, at 14:00, Fri 10 July 2015.