Genesys

 

Genesys was always a strange game for us. Generic System is obviously the word play, and considering this game's pedigree, the system powered all of Fantasy Flight's Star Wars games, it should have been a shoo-in for a lot of fun play. But it didn't take off with us, despite us loving Edge of the Empire so much.

From what I read, quite a few people love this game, and it is one of their favorite "do everything" systems like a Savage Worlds, FATE, GURPS, or other generic systems.

I suppose our group was in the middle with giving Pathfinder First Edition a serious go with a complete set of electronic character creation tools and trying to justify a huge investment in books. Books that were more fun to read than play, honestly, for fantasy artwork and inspiration. This, and all we had was the basic book - no setting, gear, worlds, spells, monsters - just kind of a rules framework and that is it.

Special Dice Needed

The game even had its own special dice, which were cool but always looked like they were covered with Star Trek symbols to me. One of them, the advantage symbol, looked almost just like a Star Trek triangle chevron thing, like what Federation people have on their uniforms. Some of them even, the failure dice, even looked like Klingon symbols. When I first saw them, I was like, yep, Star Trek dice.

They work exactly like the dice in the Star Wars game, so if you know how those work, it is an easy thing to transpose the symbols and get going.

Suns cancel X's (four point symbols-ish). A's cancel chakrams (three point symbols). Big Sun and Big X don't completely cancel each other (in successes and failures, yes; in good and bad things happening, no). I wish they didn't use circle icons on the successes and threats, I thought those two cancelled each other at first.

I ended up calling the suns "bangs" and the X's "slams" and remembering, "bangs and slams cancel and determine success." I also called the A's "checks" and the chakrams "traps" and again "checks cancel traps and determine advantage/threat." The big sun? Big bangs! The big slams? Grand slams! And you could do a cool wrestling game with these rules.

We're Gonna Need Another Book

The base rulebook really isn't enough, it is a base selection of talents and gear, and to do anything really cool you will been a supplement or a player-created expansion adding genre-specific gear, talents, and opponents. They have a fantasy book and a cyberpunk style book, so you are covered either way you go since you could easily base modern or sci-fi gamer off the cyberpunk Android game book with a little work. Fantasy is fantasy so the Terrinoth book has you covered.

This hurt our adoption of these rules, honestly. Our lives were busy and converting a setting over just to use this set of rules was too much work for a nebulous benefit. Games like GURPS have a great selection of worldbooks and equipment lists to pick and choose from - you could throw a basic "most anything" together just using the basic book, from fantasy to sci-fi and many points between. To be honest I would have liked to see more in the basic book for standard gear and genre support, that would have helped get us started. There just doesn't seem to be much "gas in the tank" without buying either the Terrinoth or Android books to get playing.

Hopeful for New Things

I hope this game continues, if those rumors are ture and we are getting an announcement soon. It really is a cool rule system and it really deserves a chance to shine and get attention - despite it isn't a newer game it still does a lot of things really well and I know this system like I know Edge of the Empire, so my fandom for these style of rules makes me an instant fan of the possibilities.

I also hope they branch out and do new things, not just as the Fantasy Flight game engine. I know the perils of licenced properties, and those don't always make for great sales sense. I could run RPG versions of just about any movie with this, like Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Trek in any era, Marvel movies, 007 movies, and just about anything you can think of.

Basing - and buying - games on licenced properties sucks, because you are darn well guaranteed the game won't last forever. No company is going to grant a perpetual licence, and very few will consider open-sourcing the rules so support can continue past the expiration date. It is cool to own "X the game" but ultimately it is more for a collectors market than it is for playing. A generic game and DIY or fan support is the way to go.

So in a way, it is probably a smart move to take a great system and de-link this from Star Wars, but I want to see more in terms of generic setting support than the books released. And certainly more than this being the FFG RPG - I want to see some new ideas and settings.