This series follows the trials, tribulations, successes, and failures of a fairly inexperienced GM who has recently picked up the hobby after a long time away. It aims to assist new GM’s by examining what worked, didn’t work, and what failed miserably as he spins up new campaigns, modules, encounters, and adventures for his friends and family in Fantasy Flight Games’ Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion/Force and Destiny system.
After getting a good deal of great questions prior to last week, I had to split up the questions into a couple different columns. I was quite surprised and pleased when I received more questions than I could answer in one sitting. So without further ado let’s dive into some more great questions about the Star Wars RPG system from FFG!
Owen Yates – Starships, when do you let your players get them? What restrictions do you put on them? Any helpful tips?
My answer to this is simple, and at first glance may be overly simple. My answer is: Whenever you want them to, and whatever restrictions make sense for your campaign. So, for example, if your campaign has situations where getting a ship is a goal, and something that’s really hard, then make it hard to get. If your campaign is about fighter pilots, give them ships at character creation. In my two campaigns I’ll give you two examples of what I did. In one campaign I had a player who wanted Obligation for a YT-1760 that he owed money on. I thought that sounded amazing so, I absolutely allowed it and it became the ship that the players fly around in. They got to and from all places they needed and fought off many TIE fighters in their YT freighter, the Steadfast Thranta.
So later the team grew in contribution rank with the Rebel Alliance and I started wanting to do capital ship combat and thought of some fantastic ideas for adventures. So, I had the Alliance give them command of a capital ship. Basically the reason is because it’s awesome and I wanted them to have it.
In my second campaign, my PC’s met in prison and broke out of prison together… and stole a Gonzati-class Cruiser. So, in that campaign, they do jobs for money and run around in a stolen ship.
So my point is, if they want one and it works with the campaign, let them have one. If you want them to work for it, let them work for it. If you don’t want capital ship combat then don’t give them a Silhouette 5 or larger ship. If you want them to be able to easily get around, give them a freighter or something similar. Just make it fun, that’s what it’s about. There are no rules because honestly, there shouldn’t be. I think whatever is fun, cinematic, and makes for your own Star Wars movie at your table is on the board and you can do anything that sounds fun!
David Shamp – If players join the campaign after it’s been on going–how do you figure out starting funds? If your PCs have 150+ XP how can you adjust starting income well for new PCs?
Well I’ve had to do this on several occasions and I’ll tell you how I do it. First of all, if Knight Level play works then run with that. But my campaign had characters that were a lot more experienced than that. I also would tell you that despite what I’m going to suggest, the SWRPG system from FFG is genius in that it’s a level-less system and discrepancies between XP levels really don’t hurt the game or playability. So I fully believe that a beginning character can have just as much fun and effectiveness in games than an experienced character.
But what I did was took the average XP of all the characters in my party and then gave the new player that much XP during character creation. We made characters as outlined in the core books, then let them add the extra XP after that. As far as money I looked at my party and how much money worth of stuff they had. I averaged that and gave the character that much to work with. Or you could just pick five to six items that help really round out the character build and you can use that as a baseline. But no matter what, you’ll be in great shape as the system is so flexible that you won’t notice the differences between your PCs. Just give them what makes sense. You can’t really mess anything up whichever way you want to go, but above is what I’ve done. I once had a player join a 1,000 earned XP game, so we had to get him pumped up quickly to match or at least be in the ballpark.
Jay Bakata – I am looking for a guide to creating adventures.
Well… this is a hard one to succinctly put into this space, but I can give you some places to start and what I do for inspiration. As far as how to put one together, that would almost be impossible because everyone’s needs, wants, campaigns, players, situations, etc. are all different. Everyone has their techniques and none are poor. I have my way of doing things but it’s different than most. However, here’s how I figure out what adventure to run if I’m unsure of an idea… a few pointers.
- Go to http://swrpgadventures.com/ – This is a fun website that has many adventure seeds in it that display as opening crawls. Just refresh the page for a new adventure idea. You can also find their twitter account at: https://twitter.com/SWRPGAdventures. They’re very fun and the twitter account and website have over 600 adventure hooks. For example, it will give you ideas like: “When a group of rogue Imperial bureaucrats broadcasts the Emperor’s secrets on the HoloNet, PCs locate and rescue them before they’re found.”
- Watch all the animated Star Wars stuff if you haven’t. The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels have incredible ideas for adventures and where you can take your campaigns. What I do is focus on a part of a show that they don’t spend much time on, and imagine how my group of PC’s can interact or take that part of the adventure. Or, I just use it as inspiration for a like-minded adventure.
- Ask your group. This is a quite underrated tactic that many GM’s don’t do. They feel the PCs’ job is to simply run through the adventures that he/she creates. However, asking what types of things and missions the group would like to do is quite a lot of fun and can guarantee your group enjoys the adventures.
Scott Alden
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