Hey everyone, I'm fairly new to RPG tabletop games. I've played lots of RPG video games and some MUDs. My only experience with tabletop is some knowledge of seeing D&D sessions. And playing ASoIaF a few times. Ive being trying to get my group to continue playing ASoIaF but there was no interest. One of them recommended this game, an I really love what I've sen so far, plus it's Star Wars. So I've decided if GM since I have to most interest.

I'm kind of worried that they won't like it, or I won't do a good job. I really want to spark interest and keep them wanting to play. So I think one of the best ways to do this is familiarize myself with the rules and system so that everything runs smooth and people aren't sitting around while I look stuff up in books.

One of my questions is the range bands. I understand them, but if I have 5 players and 5 enemies, what's the best way or some tips to keep track of who is where? This games a little different, you don't have little squares that keep track f all the pieces, it's kind of general range. But how do you suggest I keep track of which npc is where and relative to which player, etc.

Also if people choose to flee either in space or on the planet, how do you go about doing that? Which skill check would I use, and would they all have to roll?

This game is cool I think because there is quite a bit of freedom and a lot more emphasis on narration and story making the game more about everyone interceding rather than "roll a d20"

Thanks for any help, and any other tips I can from vets is much appreciated.

I'd advise you not to get too hung up on knowing everything for the first session. Try to get the basics down, for sure, but after that, don't be afraid to fudge it. Between sessions you can look up the rules you had questions about, and that way you'll gradually learn the system.

Another thing you might want to do is to trial-roll a whole bunch of skill checks, and practice how you might interpret the Advantage, Threat, Triumph & Despair. Get a feel for what the dice can produce, and how you'll interpret those results.

Both of the above will speed up your first game(s), and allow you to focus on the characters, plot, and action. That's how you'll keep 'em interested, in my opinion.

It might help to use maps and minis in the beginning. The beginner box for EotE comes with a good set of tokens to start you off with or just find whatever you have around the house. I'm pretty sure most of us here have played with coins before. Just keep the ranges fluid and don't fret too much with counting squares. If you own a wet erase map grid, that will be your best friend. Otherwise make it simple and do a rough sketch on some scratch paper and mark off where things are. Lay that paper on the table and they can fill in the rest.

I'm now to the point where I can keep up where everyone is positioned pretty easily.

Sorry I am not much of a help. Perhaps others can share their techniques.

As for escaping. I don't recall what page, but there is a section on vehicular combat for chase rules. For ground combat, I would break it down into a series of skills and allow the players chose how they escape. It could be athletics to jump over a fence, leadership to insight a riot to cover your escape, or any other skill the players can justify using.

I think the best way to start is to make it clear to your players that this is a new system and you're still learning it just like they are. Hopefully they will be sympathetic and go easy on you when stuff isn't 100% clear at the start.

If you have access to the Beginner Box, I highly recommend running through its adventure, Escape from Mos Schuuta, with a group.

It's a great introductory adventure that teaches the game as its goes. The first scene says "You're fleeing from some thugs. Here are some skills you can use to hide, and here's how you make skill checks."

The next scene says "Now you're fighting. Here's how you fight." And so on.

For our group, playing through Escape from Mos Schuuta and using its included maps and tokens really helped us understand and learn how to play.

On range bands, I'd say there are two ways to do it.

One way is to use a map and tokens or minis as reference. It's not as tactical as other games but playing with tokens can give you a rough idea of where you are in the environment and what options you have.

The other option is to reiterate it in your narration as you speak so you keep referring to the ranges and it becomes clear.

"So Oskara, you're Engaged with Pash and the other members of your party. The minion group of Stormtroopers is at Long Range, crouched behind some heavy canisters for cover. The Trandoshan Bounty Hunter is at Medium Range running towards your group at top speed. What do you do?"

Then the NPCs take their turn.

"The Stormtroopers at Long Range stay crouched in cover, ducking over the canisters to fire their blaster rifles at you. At Long Range the difficulty is 3 Purple Dice."

"Lowwrhhrk, you use one maneuver to move closer to the Trandoshan, so you go from Medium Range to Short Range of him. He's running toward you, so it looks like he might close on you in his next turn. You're at Short Range from your party."

"Oskara, you take your shot at the Trandoshan at Medium Range, trying to catch him before he closes the distance with Lowwrhhk. At Medium Range the difficulty is 2 Purple."

At the top of the round, after everybody has gone.

"So Oskara and Pash are at Long Range from the Stormtroopers and Medium Range from the Trandoshan Bounty Hunter. Lowwrhhk is at Short Range from you and Short Range from the Bounty Hunter, they are running toward each other."

...this may sound like a lot of work, but if you make it part of the flow of your narrative I think people will be able to keep it clear.

You could also use tokens or 6-sided dice or coins or something on the table itself without even using a map.

Anyway, just some ideas, hope this helps!

Thanks a lot for all the help, ideas, and tips everyone. I did get the beginner game and the core rulebook. After reading te beginner game system I decided I really liked it and wanted the core. So I plan on letting everyone make characters so try have a feeling of investment and uniqueness, and I'm going to modify the beginner story to fit in with them. I think FFG did a really good job showing a lot of different features about the game at a pace new players can figure out without being overwhelmed. Hopefully if everyone likes it I'll modify the second story, and then if they want to keep playing I'll start making up my own. A lot of good tips, I know I'll probably have to fudge some stuff along the way. My main concern is that there will be full moments where I'm constantly looking up stuff in the book while everyone waits. So I wanted to get a good sense of the general rules and dynamics, as well as make things like combat flow pretty good so people don't feel bored or overwhelmed.

Thanks again, hopefully everything goes well and I get these guys hooked.

Edit: one more question, rather than start a new thread. What are your thoughts on GM PC's? So far I've made 2 of the the 5 characters. One was my girlfriend who wanted to be different and unique and made a colonist politico, so we have someone strong at social skills and such. The other was a friend of mine who has experience with table top RPGs and figured nobody would pick doctor and made one. So we have some other valuable roles such as mechanic, pilot, and slicer. I have the feeling the remaining three players are going to combat heavy bounty hunters. Should I let them deal with the group flaws? Or make a PC to help them out when I think they'll need it in the story? Not really for the beginner story, but for anything I make up where their group is really lacking.

Just some tips about the beginner game:

Its a good tutorial, but it is a little railroady. It tends to hand hold and lead the players from one encounter to the next because its teaching the mechanics in a progressive fashion, with each encounter getting a little more complex.

The stormtroopers can be a nasty surprise if the players think they are supposed to actually fight them

The space encounter at the end is rather boring, again, its because its teaching foundations, proper space/vehicle encounters run using the full rules and proper encounter design are much more interesting.

You might want be up front about these things with your players,its a lot easier to endure the weirdness of the tutorial level of a video game if you know its the tutorial and isn't a completely accurate representation of the overall game experiance.

One of the things we did was grab some HeroClix maps and some old Star Wars minis (not sure from what game) and used those as references for placements. This gave us all a visual reference for our characters and gave us a hard measurement for ranged combat.

Also, since we were all new to rpgs, we all tried learning as many rules as we could to help our GM (who was also new). This has in-turn groomed a few potential new GMs.

All of this is coming from a complete noob so keep that in mind.

The only advice I can really give is as follows:

If you don't know the rules for something, take your best guess - tell the players that "I'll do it like this now, and look it up later, I just want to keep the story going"

Don't let the players steamroll you on anything, but at the same time don't say No. Say "Yes, and.." or "Yes, but.."

This is a harder one to follow, but very rewarding I find. Treat the characters, enemies especially, as they are actual people. What I mean is, no one wants to die. If the players are trouncing enemies, have them surrender or run away. Think about how a person or animal will react and use your npcs that way. As I said, except in extreme cases, most people, and animals especially, will not fight to the death. You don't need elaborate backstories for every npc, just some treating them like they are a person and not just something for the players to shoot at or facilitate getting more gear.

Finally, if you are worried the players are or will lose interest, talk to them about what they want from the game. Whether it is run and gun, or scoudrels with a heart of gold, if the players don't like a game style, they'll lose interest.

You mentioned making a GM PC to fill the gaps. I say don't and let the players fill in the gaps that they feel are needed as the story progresses. It will give an organic feel to the characters.

Finally, if you are worried the players are or will lose interest, talk to them about what they want from the game. Whether it is run and gun, or scoudrels with a heart of gold, if the players don't like a game style, they'll lose interest.

After the Beginner Box, and if they enjoyed it and want to keep going, see what it is that they really want out of the game. This will help keep their interest and give you a place to start with when making your own adventures.

One thing our GM does, and it is awesome, is after 6 or so sessions he runs one shots that focus on a single character. He incorporates their background, obligation, motivation and what the character in question wants to try to achieve.

As an example...

A character has a bounty on his head.

Send bounty hunters to try and collect.

Being successful allows him to live another day and reduce his bounty obligation by 1-2

In regards to ranges all you really have to know is what range does the encounter begin at. Then it's simply a matter of players telling you if they close range or increase it. You do the same with your adversaries. A basic map is fine, just keep in mind the line between medium and long is roughly 200 feet an draw your map with that in mind.

I'm kind of worried that they won't like it, or I won't do a good job.

First bit of advice - dont worry about it. Everyone starts as a beginner. Everyone is a terrible GM when they first start out. It's an acquired skill that you can only hone by practice, practice, practice. To steal a quote from Ansel Adams, your first 1,000 games are your worst.

So, where to begin. Seriously, I would start with canned games. They're great at holding your hand and giving you mechanics right there in front of you. Go get yourself the Beginners Boxed set - while a little railroady, is a great learning tool for both players and GMs (remember, they'll be learning too!). Then run Long Arm of the Hutt, a game designed to dove tail nicely into the beginners set. I might follow up with the canned game in the back of the book and the one in the GM's screen. A bit of re-writing will be in order there, to adapt them to your previous couple of games - but beyond that, it should be fine.

If you're exceptionally resourceful (or don't mind spending 40 for an-out-of-date Beta), there's also Crate of Krates. Again a touch of rewriting to make it mesh, but not all that much (if I remember the game). By that time, the Jewel of Yavin should be out, so you could move them onto the two Stand-Alone canned games.

By then you'll - hopefully - have gotten a feel on being in the hot seat and are ready to branch out on your own. The characters will have jelled by this point, so you can start tailoring your games with them in mind. And that - that is where the fun REALLY begins!

TL;DNR version: go get your hands on the Beginners Boxed Set and all the published adventures. They'll give you a good starting point for learning the art of GMing.

Mastalerz, it sounds like you have your heart set on going ahead and making new characters, but if I could just suggest again running Escape from Mos Schuuta with your party first--

The reason is that it can really help the players to understand the system and get a handle on what kind of characters they might want to create and how the various careers and specs work together.

Anyway, that's all! Sounds like you have your heart in the right place, just go with it and have fun!

Thanks again for all the advice everyone. Luckily I have a PC with a lot of enthusiasm to play, the game was his idea and we had a conversation about who should gm after we got the beginners box. We decide I was probably a better fit for GM and he'd help guide the other PC players and learn the rules so he can assist me. Al the advice you guys have given me have really helped me out, so thanks again.

I think "Progressions" have said it best with adding range bands to the narrative.

Always inform your player's that your new to being a GM and mistakes may be made,but will be corrected prior to

the next session,and just have fun above all else.Learning the rules to any RPG takes time,but is always worth it.

EOTE is an easy game to learn,and the amount of fun it provides is great.

This is the BEST star wars rpg i have ever gm'd for.