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Games I’m excited about: Genesys

Fantasy Flight Games recently announced a new genre-agnostic roleplaying game powered by the Narrative Dice System, which is of course the system used in their popular Star Wars roleplaying games. I’ve been playing Edge of the Empire for quite some time now and I’ve learned to love the system – even though I had my doubts at first.The new game will be called Genesys (yeah, the name sucks), but I am really looking forward to this game. For one I have always been a sucker for genre-agnostic games, and secondly the Narrative Dice System has a lot going for it.

Even though reading the fancy dice may be a bit complicated and annoying at first, it’s something players learn quite quickly. Instead of binary succeed/fail results you often get more nuanced ones. Interpreting the results can be a lot of fun and pretty rewarding. It also promotes teamwork since you can easily create advantages for other players. A full introduction of the dice mechanic would probably beyond the scope of this post, so I recommend checking out the official announcement which includes an in-depth look at the mechanics.

What I like about FFG’s Star Wars games is that they offer a lot of depth, without being too complex or hard to get into. There are countless talent trees you can use to customize your character. The classes provide the characters with some focus, but they don’t restrain you too much. I really hope the Genesys classes will be designed in a similar way.

From what we know so far, the game will include some genre-specific information and I guess there will also be setting books in the future. I’d definitely buy one based on FFG’s Android setting. But a genre-agnostic game should allow you to easily adapt existing or homebrew settings and I have no doubts the Narrative Dice System can handle this task with ease.

What are your thoughts on Genesys? Please share your comments below.
Stargazer

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team. In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games. Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

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4 comments

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DD Ra

Like you I love “genre-agnostic” systems but the dice throwing system seemed a too crunchy for me. But after reading this comic on “uptoforplayers” about the rules of Edge of the Empire, I’ll give it a try, maybe with the generic Genesys system.

Links for the comic :
http://www.uptofourplayers.com/comic/edge-empire-rulez-pt-1/
http://www.uptofourplayers.com/comic/edge-empire-rulez-pt-2/
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Gear Knight

Nice. Personally I would love to see genre neutral Dark Heresy.
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    comments user
    Stargazer

    That would be a tad too crunchy for my tastes, but I can fully understand your position. The rules used in FFG’s WH40K roleplaying games were quite solid. But I doubt this will ever happen.
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David W

I am VERY excited about Genesys. I absolutely adore the narrative dice system and I can’t wait to apply it to settings outside of Star Wars (even though I am a huge SW fan).
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