I bought the core book and the GM kit as a bundle at the local gamestore. I normally dont buy hard copies of rpgs but this one had me sold after i played it. But i was thinking which supplements should i get that would be most beneficial for a GM. My friend already got the beginner box and we played through it but another hundred bucks for all supplements seemed a bit steep so was trying to prioritize in terms of useful information for a GM. And also for adventuring out in the the universe for the first time with their own characters recommend any prewritten adventures or should i homebrew it.

I'd just have a look at the subjects of each book and see what appeals to you.

Right now there is an exploration adventure called Beyond the Rim, a sourcebook for Explorer characters, a sourcebook for the Corellian Sector, and a sourcebook for Hired Gun characters.

Personally we were so inspired by both the Explorer book and the Corellian Sector that we've used a LOT of that material as a foundation for our current campaign.

Other parties might be more interested in Hired Guns and their abilities. I'd say talk to your group, or just purchase whichever books seem interesting to you.

Right now the corellian sector looked the most interesting, one of my players already purchased all the supplements but i wanted to make sure i had a copy as well of things that would be most useful to a GM.

Well, if you want to support other players in being able to create characters with new specializations from the Explorer or Hired Gun books, those would obviously be good candidates for that.

As a GM, the Suns of Fortune is your best starting point. It's largely a GM's suppliment and it has plenty of fluff. The modular encounters are pretty neat, but if one of your players already has SoF, he'll probably recognize the encounters right off the bat, so be careful when using those with the rest of the group. That book also has a lot of stat blocks for various creatures and adversaries.

Beyond that, think about what kind of story you and your players are going to tell. If it's largely exploration based, hit up Enter the Unknown. If your PCs want to focus more on combat, and high action, you might want to pick up Dangerous Covenants.

Unless your player that already owns all the books hasn't check out Beyond the Rim yet, don't worry about picking that one up. If he hasn't checked it out, the adventure is pretty good and a lot more open than some of the other published adventures out there. The creatures in the book (Cyber Nexu), are pretty awesome.

If you've got the CRB you've got all you need. I get the supplements, not the pre made adventures, but I don't consider the supplements essential, just fun and something I want. There is more than enough fiction material that can found to provide basis for plenty of table time. I used a couple of the old Han Solo novels for sessions. I have a Scoundrels meets Fast n Furious meet Kelley's Heroes kind of an idea I'm getting my guys into in the next session(s) arc. There was a spaghetti western theme thread and we were listing favorite westerns, it struck me what a great basis Appaloosa was for a Hired Gun setting. You need the rules, dice or app, some imagination, and that's about it.

We do have a truce of "dont read the friggin adventures if you arent GMing" Im actually borrowing Beyond the Rim right now so i think he was hoping id run it so i dont need to worry about him peaking at the GM material. He wont GM, ever.

Count yourself lucky that you've got players that respect those GM/Player boundaries in reading.

And thanks for starting this thread. I really enjoyed thumbing through the other sourcebooks in the store, but haven't decided which ones are best; it's nice to get others' opinions!

You're welcome. I've played with very few players who will do the whole spoilers thing personally I find nothing more aggravating than a player who reads the adventure the GM is running. Sorting out what material to buy is always the hardest part if you dont have a crazy amount of cash to spend

It really depends, to be honest. I have a hard time running published adventures, so Beyond the Rim is out for me. I know a lot about the Star Wars universe, so Suns of Fortune was a disappointment and offered me little. But those player books, Enter the Unknown and Dangerous Covenants, are excellent.

If you have explorer characters or are interested in running a campaign beyond established civilization: Enter the Unknown will do you well.

Do you expect smash and grabs to be commonplace? Pick up Dangerous Covenants... just do it. I feel this is the best supplement released so far.

Do you want one of the most iconic sectors to set your game in, but know little about it? Maybe Suns of Fortune will be better for you than it was for me.

Do you want to run a relatively well received adventure involving salvage of a fabled treasure ship from the Clone Wars? Grab Beyond the Rim, if you like.

I'm like Colyer in that running published adventures is hard, at least as written.

I always buy at least on published adventure though. It gives me a basic base-line on what the game publisher envisions an adventure as. Which is turn helps me see how they intended the game to play. For me this is extremely helpful for when I start tweaking the game to my style of running.

In the end you'll have to balance what makes the game fun for you against what makes it fun for your players. At best you will all have the same vision. At worst only one half will really have any fun prompting a re-think of the campaign or even swapping out who is GM'ing.

Star Wars is a widely know property so there is one piece of actual advice I will give. Firmly and clearly establish what you consider canon for your universe. Do this before the players begin form their ideas on PC backgrounds. This applies to any large established universe, Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, etc.

For myself, Star Wars has not been high on my interest radar until this RPG system, so my universe knowledge is not as great as most likely the majority of other posters on this forum. But I have been RPG'ing and GM'ing games since the late 70's so my ability to run is good, but my specific setting knowledge is poor.

So, for my Star Wars game canon is limited to:

The Movies

The Clone Wars series

The FFG Rulebooks and Supplements that I possess or have ready access to.

What is not canon?

The 20 zillion novels

Old RPG's

And any and all video games from any platform.

You will need to add to your personal canon list any and all material you are comfortable with. But do not be afraid to stand your ground, if the players know the universe better that you it can cause the game to fail. This isn't as much an issue with a group of experienced RPG'ers, but if you have a lot newer players it can cause issues if they know something is true that does not exist and they were basing their actions on it. Now you are stuck with either factoring in something you never heard of, ruling it out or something in between. But most likely not satisfying to everyone. Remember that when this happens, no one has done something wrong.

Roleplaying is a cooperative art and when people are not on the same page it will fall apart. If that happens, simply get your group together and find out what worked and didn't work and then restart with a campaign everyone can buy into.

PS as a extremely useful and impressive game aid, I recommend OggDude 's

SW:EotE Character Generator and GM Tools , an incredible resource.

I bought the core book and the GM kit as a bundle at the local gamestore. I normally dont buy hard copies of rpgs but this one had me sold after i played it. But i was thinking which supplements should i get that would be most beneficial for a GM. My friend already got the beginner box and we played through it but another hundred bucks for all supplements seemed a bit steep so was trying to prioritize in terms of useful information for a GM. And also for adventuring out in the the universe for the first time with their own characters recommend any prewritten adventures or should i homebrew it.

I have all the supplements and they all have very useful information for all your player and GM needs.

As for adventures, i would download the "shadows of a black sun" module on this website for a starter adventure. Read it a couple of times first and then run it. Its a good adventure for veteran players but yet is a good one for new comers to playing and GMing.

I'm like Colyer in that running published adventures is hard, at least as written.

I don't think I've ever run a canned game as-written. Most of the time I'll take the story, strip-mine the hell out of it for good nuggets, eliminate the stuff that just plain does not make sense (or railroads too hard), adapt the good stuff to suit my players and go from there. On a high level, it might be recognizable as the original material, but the nuts and bolts will be changed all around.

I'm like Colyer in that running published adventures is hard, at least as written.

I don't think I've ever run a canned game as-written. Most of the time I'll take the story, strip-mine the hell out of it for good nuggets, eliminate the stuff that just plain does not make sense (or railroads too hard), adapt the good stuff to suit my players and go from there. On a high level, it might be recognizable as the original material, but the nuts and bolts will be changed all around.

This is when my tightwad factor kicks in, because I do the same to canned games and just got to the point where I couldn't justify the price anymore. I like sourcebooks but just don't do the module thing.

I'm like Colyer in that running published adventures is hard, at least as written.

I don't think I've ever run a canned game as-written. Most of the time I'll take the story, strip-mine the hell out of it for good nuggets, eliminate the stuff that just plain does not make sense (or railroads too hard), adapt the good stuff to suit my players and go from there. On a high level, it might be recognizable as the original material, but the nuts and bolts will be changed all around.

This is when my tightwad factor kicks in, because I do the same to canned games and just got to the point where I couldn't justify the price anymore. I like sourcebooks but just don't do the module thing.

@ Desslok - Oh I've run them successfully and everyone had fun. But the majority of those were intro style modules such as the EotE Boxed Set or Free RPG Day adventures. While not as interesting as a 'made' adventure, they were fun and served as a 'how to play platform' that let me test the waters while not 'wasting' my good ideas .

@ 2P51 - I can understand that. Dead tree-wise I am 100% with you. I find very thin low page count hardback sourcebooks very hard to justify. Much harder than the same sourcebook in a softcover format that is $10 cheaper. Most adventures I buy these days are PDF's that for some reason catch my eye. For EotE they all need to be converted, but that usually isn't too hard.

I don't usually bother with canned games, but occasionally the plot of one sounds interesting enough to draw me in. They can also be helpful for a GM who's learning a system as they often outline what skills/rules are useful in certain spots and give advice in their usage.

I haven't run enough Pre-Fab games to honestly have a style. Just a few over 20+ years of GMing assorted system. I imaging I'll stay more or less true, but of the story takes a left turn when the module expects a right, you need to be ready for it.

As far as the OP's question. No books are essential. They all add more equipment, races, ships, etc. The class books obviously fill out the classes, and the sector books give info on a region. Take what you think will help you or your party.

I'm FFG's favorite type of customer, an OCD completest, so I'm buying them all. (Won't buy the talent cards though, they seem rather redundant and dumb.)

Perhaps I should report, as well.

I started as the GM for the beta, which was an open game at our local gaming store, during which I strung a lot of little adventures from 100 Sci-Fi Adventure Seeds that somehow (I would say miraculously) tied themselves together for a nice showdown & wrap-up at the end.

In what I call "Season 2", I ran "Debts to Pay" after the party recovered and began the campaign proper. Until I figure out the cool, spoiler button, let's just say the villains got away and are a major part of the arc I started back in Season 1. It was a nice addition, especially considering the key player for the major arc in Season 1 moved away.

Then, as a break, I ran "Trouble Brewing". At the beginning were still some minor arcs left over from a special mineral they encountered that is potentially valuable, so a couple of lightsaber bodies here & there, as well as some other NPC's with vendettas against them for some of their double-crossings from Season 1, but otherwise "by-the-book". Strangely enough, the only elements that have stayed interesting to the players are the minor arcs I interspersed during the scenario/adventure.

I mostly tested the pre-packaged scenarios to learn some more skill applications and common dice-rolls (or at least what the developers thought to be useful), but it ended up introducing so many factions after my rat-bastard players (and I say that with the utmost joy) that I am honestly having a hard time deciding who to throw at them each game. Maybe a Legion of Doom is in order.

But at this point, I have about six games left to tie all of my loose ends up, or at least a couple... I am going to call a vote on the players soon once Age of Rebellion comes out proper as to if they want to remain in this theme or pick up as an AoR group. The Sith-related shenanigans will probably carry over to AoR.

One thing that this thread made me think of was how much more I'd like to incorporate my players' obligations into the story. I suppose I'm doing okay , but I could definitely throw the obligation in a lot more.