SWFFG House Rules Part 1 - Range Band Approximates

Hello again! I intend for this to be the first in a series of short articles on the house rules that I use in my own games, which will include an explanation of the rules as written, and why I decided to change them up. Let's get started.

In the Star Wars FFG system, instead of dealing in exact distances like in other RPGs (D&D in particular comes to mind), you deal in "range bands": approximate distances you use for things like weapon range, or how far a character/vehicle can move in a turn. Having these distances be vague is nice, because it lends itself to narrative play (a big theme of SWFFG, if you've been reading the other articles), and takes pressure off you, the game master, to create extra resources like battle maps (which display the exact, live location of characters compared to each other and their surroundings during an encounter). This makes theater of mind play even easier, and if you, the game master have to switch something up on the fly (say, rearrange the room due to a player's action, or cheese the location of some enemies to keep the suspense of a scene up) you can do that easily.

The range bands of the SWFFG system are broken up into two sets: Personal Scale, and Planetary Scale. The Personal Scale deals with distances individual characters can expect to be interacting in, and includes an Engaged, Short, Medium, Long, and Extreme Range. The Planetary Scale is for ship and vehicle interactions, and includes Close, Short, Medium, Long, and Extreme Ranges. The entirety of the Personal Scale sits within the Planetary Close band. Now, to make the whole thing a little more complicated, the distances of the Planetary Scale actually vary depending on whether you are in space or on the surface/within the atmosphere of a planet. Planetary Close remains the same, but Planetary Short, Medium, Long, and Extreme all shrink when on a planet.

The strength of this system is its versatility. However, sometimes references are in order to help maintain player immersion. For instance, while I don't make D&D style battle maps for my own campaign, I will still often generate a rough area map so that the players and I are both on the same page about what they're looking at. Inevitably, they will want to know how far away something is, how big a room is, what's the size of this ship, and so forth. Answers like "short range" or "long range" aren't exactly satisfying or easy to visualize, and throwing out random numbers can lead to inconsistencies. Luckily, the Core Rulebooks have addressed this to an extent, and provide some reference numbers for some of the range bands. These are more meant for GM reference than for the players, as the GM can then use them to explain questions their players have without getting their players into the bad habit of thinking in exact distances for range or movement.

Now, in my opinion, the range bands provided in the Core Rulebooks, particularly for the personal scale, are far too short for the Star Wars setting. In other popular RPGs like D&D, ranges are rather short because a), the setting is fantasy, and combat typically involves people on foot using medieval, short range weapons: b), a single turn lasts on the order of six seconds in game, limiting the distances that can be moved, and: c), dungeon masters have to draw up actual battle maps, where each square foot/meter is individually represented, making large scale areas impracticable, if not impossible to create. SWFFG has none of these limitations, so it doesn't make sense why you end up with engagements limited to the same scale. With this in mind, I ended up with the following approximate range bands distances:

Personal: Engaged: ~0 to 1m Short: 1 to 5m Medium: 5 to 60m Long: 60 to 120m Extreme: 120 to 500m

I haven't adjusted the planetary bands as much, but they are a pain to track down in the books anyways, so here they are all together:

Planetary: Close: 0.5 to 5km Short: 5 to 36km (Surface), 5 to 60km (Space) Medium: 36 to 50km (Surface), 60 to 500km (Space) Long: 50 to 200km (Surface), 500 to 5,000km (Space) Extreme: 200km to 1000km (Surface), 5,000 to 25,000km (Space)

Hopefully these help you scale your engagements a little better. Now, nothing in this installment was particularly groundbreaking but I wanted to put it out first as it lays the groundwork for my next article on FFG house rules, so look out for that in the near future. Until then, if you have feedback, criticisms, or witty remarks, please send them in an email to the address listed at the bottom of the page.

Till next time,

Lazer

#StarWars #HouseRules #Range #SWFFG