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Hello there and happy holidays!

This news comes to you somewhat delayed from what I had originally intended, but to borrow a line from Han Solo, “everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?” Anyway, sometimes things in our system get changed, but they don’t always make it into a report or a supplemental news post. We can at times be left to discover them on our own, or maybe they’ll get mentioned in a chat, but I know those can move quickly and things can get lost, or not everyone will pay attention to them. In an effort to keep you informed about ongoing changes, I decided to utilize this again. First off, if you haven’t done so already, check out the big news in the previous Voice report that Idris put out detailing the changes to some of our skills. Along with these changes, some new feats have been added:

• Bad Cop uses Intimidation in place of Charm
• Good Cop uses Charm in place of Intimidation
• Cardboard Box gives a bonus to Stealth
• Hero Landing uses Athletics in place of Stealth
• Lightfooted uses Stealth in place of Slicing
• Silent Blade uses Stealth in place of Bladed Weapons

You’ll also want to take a look at Turel’s most recent Fist Report, which details the changes to the fictional side of the GMRG, new items for progressing through the ranks, and also contains two new selectable feats (Behind Enemy Lines and Back Knife Block) and one granted feat (Improvise, Adapt, Overcome) that become available to you when reaching the appropriate society ranks.

Hot LZ is a new feat I found while poking through the database to write this up. It gives a bonus to Piloting (situationally, of course).

And a new addition suggested by Sofila “Sagitta” Douve Armis (also known as Jenni on Discord) is Grab Them By The Horns. This uses Creature Handling in place of Martial Arts when subduing or grappling an opponent.

Updates

In addition to those, there have been some tweaks made recently that may be of interest to you.

Beast of Burden and Second Skin have been able to stack since the latter’s introduction with the feats update from a couple years ago. That always bugged me, so I asked Idris if they could become tiered instead. Behold, they’ve now been merged together to create Second Skin I and II. Make note that the rank requirements have changed, unlocking at the Journeyman and Equite rank tiers, respectively. Now you can spend that precious second feat slot (if you used it) on something else!

I Made This, a feat for crafting, has now become tiered as well, renamed to I Made This I and I Made These II. The first tier was updated to make it clear that it applies to a single crafted item, while the second tier unlocks once you reach the Equite ranks and applies to two weapons your character made (these items must be noted in your loadout description).

Familiar Steel has been updated to now apply to lightsabers, in addition to the previous types of weapons.

Leaf On The Wind has been clarified to note that it applies to the piloting of jetpacks in addition to ships and vehicles.

Deflect This allows you to use your Bladed Weapons skill in place of your Lightsaber skill when deflecting or redirecting blaster fire. Previously, this only worked with lightsaber resistant bladed weapons, but now it works with lightsabers as well. However, please keep in mind that despite lightsaber forms being open to NFUs, deflection/redirection of blaster bolts is still restricted to Force Users.

The Resolve skill has been updated to reflect that it works against Telepathy and Charm, in addition to the previous skills/Force powers. Be sure to give it a read to familiarize yourself with it.

Idris also updated the language for the Dowsing feats for the Arcanist discipline. The wording for the rank tiers is now consistent in that each level mentions it can be used to track items or people, specifies how recent a time period the object used for tracking needs to have been in contact with the target, and the distance at which the ability works.

Plasma Lock has also become a new tiered feat! Now renamed as Plasma Manipulation I and II, the new level is for members starting at Elder 1. Moving beyond being able to hold a blaster bolt in place, you can use this new level to deflect them with a hand gesture. Because it came up in an email recently, bear in mind that this needs to be done one at a time, although higher TK makes it easier to move from one to the next and there’s no reason you can’t chain it, it’ll just be draining the more you do it. Also, if you’ve got multiple attacks from multiple opponents all at once, that’s still going to be a problem. My initial source of inspiration for this request was Darth Maul in the final season of The Clone Wars when Bo-Katan first attacked him in the throne room on Mandalore. Another user of the ability came in the form of the High Republic character Porter Engle, a feat which I learned about when Malfearak shared a screenshot in Fiction Chat from the novel Light of the Jedi.

Other Notes

This is maybe more in line with my previous post on common issues, but either I forgot to add it in or it’s come up since then, so I’ll mention it now. There are times when I’ve seen some people using a lore/knowledge slot on some things that they don’t necessarily need to. Just to remind people, there are some topics granted automatically to every sheet:

• Lore and History of the Brotherhood
  
• The history of the Galactic Civil War including the Alliance to Restore the Republic and the Galactic Empire
  
• The history of the modern era including the New Republic and post-Galactic Concordance conflicts
  

Their purpose was/is so that you can hit the ground running with both knowledge of the Brotherhood and the recent(ish) historical events of the club’s larger setting of the Star Wars universe. Of course people are going to know of the galactic events that happened - they were pretty important, after all, hard to escape that sort of thing, even out in the Outer Rim. The one about Brotherhood history came up in Fiction Chat recently and it was mentioned that it was mostly a holdover from the old way the club worked of people going to the Shadow Academy first and then being shipped off to join a clan. It was suggested that, should you choose to, you can disregard them for character purposes. That’s perfectly fine, and totally up to you. I just want people to know that they exist and there’s no need to double down by submitting something that does basically the same thing when it could possibly be used for another topic that’s not covered. Or if you want to use a slot to get a little more specific with Brotherhood things, or other historical topics, that’s cool too.

Similarly, you’re granted both Basic and the native language of your chosen species, if there is one. You don’t want to waste a slot on something you already have by default.

A Look Back

As we close out the year, I wanted to bring this to light. This year we have had a lot of species proposals. Of those, 8 have gone on to be added to the system: Kushiban, Kessurian, Dowutin, Gamorrean, Shani, Lurmen, Selonian, and Dug. We treat these in much the same way as a Character Sheet that comes across the queue. The proposals get reviewed and discussed, the higher-ups weigh in, and a decision is made one way or the other. As with a remanded sheet, if a proposed species isn’t added, we’ll tell you why. However, being told no isn’t necessarily the end of the line. Sometimes, we just need some more info before we can give it the okay, such as their appearance not being known (which may be partially obscured or known only through rumors) or their status in the current canon timeline. All this to say, don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work out. We can always revisit it if and when new information comes to light.

In the similar vein to proposed species, many of the feat updates I shared came as a result of people asking for clarification or if there could be something added to them. If anything, this year alone is proof that you can make a difference, your ideas are valid, and that we’re listening. Never be afraid to speak up and share your thoughts.

We’ve also got new data on species usage, courtesy of James (praise be), which was taken earlier this month. If you want to check it out, you can find it on this spreadsheet, just make sure to click on the tab for 2023. For the top species list, green indicates moving up, red is moving down, and blue is one that wasn’t there last time in 2020.

Finally, another reminder that the Character Sheet Reference Database (which you might see referred to as C-D4WG by some of us) can be a great help when looking stuff up. It does take some getting used to, I admit, but it has the benefit of being the most up to date source as it auto updates when things get changed/added to the system. I cannot stress strongly enough that you take a moment to bookmark it now for easy access.

And as always, if you have questions, concerns, suggestions, spotted an error, or need help with something, drop us an email at [Log in to view e-mail addresses] and we’ll see what we can do.

I hope you’ve all had a great year and enjoy the festivities tonight, if you haven’t already! I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what the next one has in store.