How do you guys go about creating an adventure or campaign?

I have struggled for years (mostly warhammer) to come up with plots and devices, and things to do, and how different things fot together, while

allowing the payers some freedom to work it out, without railroading it, or making it all entirely too vague.

I have read, but not run, Escape from Mos Schuut and Long Arm of the Hutt, I like how the adventures give suggestions for what happens if the PCs Suceed or Fail in things, and how to manage thigns if the PCs fail to pick or a piece of information, or dont know what to make of it.

I cannot work out details of how to have multiple things going on that tie to the core plot, but dont break the game if the PCs fail to find something.

My group are very experienced players, and hav some very experienced GMS amoung them, while my own experience is limited (to Warhammer 2nd Ed, and PrePrinted adventures) They also have a habit of wanting to do their own thing, which I often struggle to deal with 'on the fly'
(So much so, that one player in my last warhammer campaign was so determined to do his own thing, because 'its what his character would do' that it broke the entire adventure and I couldnt find a way of putting it back on track)

I would love to be able to write adventures (and eventually entire campaigns, or linked Adventures) that allow (or at least give the perception) of player freedom.

So does anyone have any tips, tricks, suggestions or frameworks they can suggest that would help me construct adventures for my group (Due to the lack of fan made adventures I can find).

Many thanks,
RD

I struggled with this too, until I kind of gave up and instead focussed on a strategy for winging it. Keep in mind, it's one thing to spend months with a team writing up a single adventure module where you can account for all kinds of player actions; and quite another to have to do provide that level of detail on a regular basis all by yourself. The module writers have it easy* ;-) because they don't have to deal with the fallout when it all goes south. Also consider that a module is only going to keep players busy for a few sessions, and you're going to have to take it from there.

The good thing about published modules is they give you a framework for setting difficulties or setting up encounters. So don't be afraid to run a couple to give yourself a framework for winging it later. Flexibility is key, and in some ways, overpreparedness can be an enemy.

At this point I've cut my preparation down to this:

- outline a few key plot points. These are things that you'd like to happen to move things along. Mostly this includes people they must meet, or information they must gain. I try to avoid "places they must go"--except for once the players are hooked and know that's the mission--because that is much harder to enforce, but...

- make "places they must go" as flexible as possible. If they need to meet so-and-so, and the players are already at a cantina but you had planned for that person to be at the subway, there's nothing to stop you from moving that person to the cantina

- double or triple up on the clues or people. You may not end up using all or even most of what you've thought up for the session, but you can always use those ideas later.

During play, rule #1 is listen to the players. That doesn't mean listen to them talking to you, it means listen to them talking to each other. In trying to solve a problem, they will drop all kinds of cool ideas you never thought of, and while they're planning their attack, you can quietly adjust and improve upon your plans. The fun part (for me anyway) is adjusting so that each player turns out to have been "prescient" about some aspect of the encounter or session, eg: "I bet if we open the vault it'll turn out to be empty, the real treasure is somewhere else, probably hidden in plain sight."

...and so it becomes! Can't do that with everything, obviously, and it's just one example, but listening to the players is probably your best creative guide.

Rule 2 (for me anyway) is to use a "flexibility generator" for when the players are outside the bounds of what I'd imagined prior to the game. For this purpose I use one handful of dice (YGGRPP) and ask myself a question about the situation. Positive dice are better for players, so if the question is "is this shop keeper friendly or hostile", better results on the positive dice are better for players. Sometimes one roll is all you need to invent a whole sub-story and be able to adapt to what the players are doing.

A couple resources:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/61xghntcer3l0sg/wk8NyOuryn/The%20List.pdf <-- from D20 Radio, must-have things for combat encounters (I couldn't find the original, so put it in my dropbox)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3ck5ctvlz54aduf/EotE%20-%20Environmental%20Set%20Pieces%20v1.7.pdf <-- some D20 Radio contributors, very handy "set pieces" for creating encounters on the fly

--------------

* jk, it's hard work and I admire what they do.

Well I've heard some advise picking two gurps supplements and go from there, but I think you might want to look at the stuff you like and pick any two and combine those for your adventure and see what develops.

Fate especially Dresden Files has a world creation for the start, it might help if you start off discussing what they like about Star Wars and then cherry pick from their ideas.

You can easily just pick a couple of books you've read and liked and use them to inspire your next adventure.

For example I've read the novelisation of both Pacific Rim and Man of Steel so say start off your game with the Empire attacking a presumed Rebel Sympathising world and your players are caught in the commotion of trying to escape off world.

You could have them caught away from the spaceport leaving say a couple of PCs present and they're forced to take off in the ship and fly outside of the city and the spaceport as the Empire strafes the city and sends its forces to take the spaceport leading to a pair of TIE fighters flying in pursuit of the ships taking off trying to avoid being blown apart.

Have them take out another ship whilst letting the players sweat trying to reach safety outside of the city avoiding the incoming Storm Troopers who are surrounding the city limits leaving them little time to reach the rendezvous with their ship and then fly off planet trying to evade pursuit as they reach the safe limits of the system and enter hyperspace.

That would just be the start of the game use their obligations to explain what happens next and let their ideas as they talk around the table give you ideas for future subplots and adventures after all you could just have Darth Vader turn up every time the Force Sensitive PC tries overusing their force powers or you can throw in rumours for them to discuss like how Vader was relieved of command of some fleet and then turned up on Chandrilla and blew up the farmstead of some former Senator and her family...

The Fate world creation idea however will help you discover what your players are interested in and more importantly give you a bit of extra breathing space to figure out what you're going to run.

Oh before I forget the most important part is to have fun!

I've had great luck using the concept of Fronts from Dungeon World. In essence, you as GM think up a couple different plotlines, then break them down into 3-4 incidents that can occur with or without player interaction. Using a brainstorming tool like a mindmapper is pretty useful here. You do spent a bunch more time in planning your stories initially, but then session prep takes a lot less time.

Once you've figured out these rough plot points (and remaining general is a good idea) set them in motion! You'll know what happens if the players take the bait or not, so you can keep our story's consistency either way. If you keep your points very generalized you won't run into many problems when the players go off the rails.

I've been running a sandbox (with some premade modules adaptively thrown into the mix) for a year now and I'm forced to improvise about 5 minutes into every session...the best laid plans, they say. To that end, Play Unsafe has been a great boon to me to help my improvisational skills. I might also suggest looking into storytelling courses/books to help you with your presentation technique. A little pacing goes a long way when you're pulling your story out of a gundark's heinie and give you those critical extra seconds to think.

At this point I've cut my preparation down to this:

- outline a few key plot points. These are things that you'd like to happen to move things along. Mostly this includes people they must meet, or information they must gain. I try to avoid "places they must go"--except for once the players are hooked and know that's the mission--because that is much harder to enforce, but...

- make "places they must go" as flexible as possible. If they need to meet so-and-so, and the players are already at a cantina but you had planned for that person to be at the subway, there's nothing to stop you from moving that person to the cantina

- double or triple up on the clues or people. You may not end up using all or even most of what you've thought up for the session, but you can always use those ideas later.

During play, rule #1 is listen to the players. That doesn't mean listen to them talking to you, it means listen to them talking to each other. In trying to solve a problem, they will drop all kinds of cool ideas you never thought of, and while they're planning their attack, you can quietly adjust and improve upon your plans. The fun part (for me anyway) is adjusting so that each player turns out to have been "prescient" about some aspect of the encounter or session, eg: "I bet if we open the vault it'll turn out to be empty, the real treasure is somewhere else, probably hidden in plain sight."

...and so it becomes! Can't do that with everything, obviously, and it's just one example, but listening to the players is probably your best creative guide.

Rule 2 (for me anyway) is to use a "flexibility generator" for when the players are outside the bounds of what I'd imagined prior to the game. For this purpose I use one handful of dice (YGGRPP) and ask myself a question about the situation. Positive dice are better for players, so if the question is "is this shop keeper friendly or hostile", better results on the positive dice are better for players. Sometimes one roll is all you need to invent a whole sub-story and be able to adapt to what the players are doing.

Once you've figured out these rough plot points (and remaining general is a good idea) set them in motion! You'll know what happens if the players take the bait or not, so you can keep our story's consistency either way. If you keep your points very generalized you won't run into many problems when the players go off the rails.

All great advice, thank you, but where I fall down is coming up with story concepts, plot points, the clues, and tieing them together. As far as concepts goes, I seem to fall down with just:

Ship something/someone to somewhere.

Collect something from somewhere.

Rescue someone from somewhere

Get info from somewhere/someone

Its the specifics that entirely escape me, and how to link them without railroading everything or ending up with too much emphasis on a single thing, or single action.

I actually prefer to sandbox the little buggers and make them do the work on the story: This is what you have and are in the world, where do you want to go, what do you want to do, who do you want to meet?

Then wing it!

For 'GM events' I have certain things rumbling around in the background as part of the world turning that they can deal with pro-actively if they want, or deal with the consequences later of ignoring it in preference to doing something else.

For 'PC events' I have a very good record in my brain of just exactly 'what' they get up too, this event may be benevolent, benign or a consequence of being a murdering bastard.

As far as static stuff goes, mostly I'll write up some more interesting NPC's, maybe detail a planet or city for further adventuring and also some random encounters specific to that area which I can use to bump things along, distract them with as events happen or give some of the more violent types something to beat to death. Its also important to know the characters chances of achieving something and if any of them are specialists at certain areas so I can tailor a few things to make sure they're getting used and relevant.

As far as coming up with stories go, steal them. Any episodic TV show or movie can be translated to Star Wars lore. Change the character's names, turn half the humans to a different species, trade in cars for ships and you're almost done. Are you a fan of Lost? Have your character's ship crash on an island where some strange force monster is hunting them down. Fan of Sons of Anarchy, give your PC's swoops, make sure they can't trust any of their so called NPC friends, and steal story lines from different episodes.

Finally, one of the best thigns I ever did for my story telling was to read books about story telling. My personal favorites are Save the Cat by Blake Snyder and Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field. Obviously, you don't want to write a script, but it's a lot easier to get a cinematic feel to your games if you understand a little about how those stories work. If you don't feel like reading a whole book, do a search for the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet. This will give you an idea of the basic flow of cinematic story telling. Input characters, motivations, etc and bam, you're done. Sort of. There's a few things you can't really plan for on the beat sheet, but knowing what they are and in what order they come should help you out a lot.

And remember, every Star Wars movie begins with the crawl. They have three acts that take place in three different environments.

Most important though, steal plot ideas from everywhere.

Its the specifics that entirely escape me, and how to link them without railroading everything or ending up with too much emphasis on a single thing, or single action.

I'm not sure you need to provide the specifics, or maybe I'm not understanding what you mean. At most for any session you might need two or three encounters roughly fleshed out, in case the players decide to act in a certain way.

How about picking one of the things you mentioned, eg: Ship something/someone to somewhere.

Make it a piece of stolen art that needs to get to a buyer. Come up with three things that might get in the PCs way (eg: customs agent, rival thief, original owner), and one plot twist. Then post them here and maybe people can help flesh each one out.

BTW, this should be required reading for every GM:

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

I rarely use a premade scenario as I truly enjoy making my own. Currently I am DM a game of dungeons and dragons and anticipate moving to edge of the empire when we are finished.

What I usually do is think of one major event or character that I want to include in the game and plan them out really well then I build the rest of the campaign around that. For my dnd campaign I ended up planning something for every part of the world that I was going to allow them access to. the main island and a secondary island. This is a little more difficult in edge of the empire.

the campaign I'm working on now focuses on an abandoned base. Once I decided that I wanted them to find the base and get the loot from it I begin to develop the base.

I first asked why was it built? then what was it used for? etc.. until I asked why is it abandoned?

from there I bring it down to how does it interact with the PCs. how do they find out about it what clues have been left etc.

what I recommend for you is if you are having trouble design the character who they work for. Then figure out what type of business he does and who he would normally work with. once you get the basics of his organization you can let the pcs do what ever they want and just add details as they interact with he different portions of his organization. if they go off on a tangent how would their employer react? once you have him designed things will start flowing a little easier.

I hope this helps.

All great advice, thank you, but where I fall down is coming up with story concepts, plot points, the clues, and tieing them together. As far as concepts goes, I seem to fall down with just:

Ship something/someone to somewhere.

Collect something from somewhere.

Rescue someone from somewhere

Get info from somewhere/someone

Its the specifics that entirely escape me, and how to link them without railroading everything or ending up with too much emphasis on a single thing, or single action.

Others have suggested it and so will I: Steal liberally from your favorite stories. Your examples above are a fine start, they just need to be fleshed out.

For example, the crew could be hired to deliver something as you suggest. So what is it? Who has it now? Where is it going? Can you tie it to your players' obligations, motivations, or even their background story? That could be the twist.

There are only so many stories really. It's the characters and details that make them unique.

I've found that if I really know my player's background, Obligation and motivation, the story can almost write itself. Got a player with a bounty? Stat out a bounty hunter nemesis and have him come calling. Who put the bounty on the PC? Why? Push your players obligation to the front of the story. Sure your PC's are hired to deliver goods from point A to point B, but what do they do when they know the BH is waiting for them when they land? What if the cargo belongs to a Hutt, who will put another bounty on the players if they fail to deliver?

OK, All good advice, but not really getting to the crux of my issue... which leads me to believe the following:

Is it possible, that adventure writing, is so individual, that there is no particular method that anyone else could apply in order to reach the same result?

Is it possible that some people are simply unable (not wired right?) to write adventures of any significant ability?

As far as stealing ideas go, I have been wracking my mind for films and TV shows that have a story I could lift.... and I am coming up blank.

Maybe someone could give me an example of a film, its basic plot, and how they have (or might) adapt it to a Star Wars adventure, so I might get a glimpse of their thought process.

I wonder if my mindset is so focused on rules and A-B-C type thinking, that I might be unable to actually create an adventure with options and background... I cannot fathom how to create a set of characters, and how to connect them in ways hte players could discover and use, to reach a conclusion.... could it be that I am simply incapable of doing this?

Many thanks

RD

OK, All good advice, but not really getting to the crux of my issue... which leads me to believe the following:

Is it possible, that adventure writing, is so individual, that there is no particular method that anyone else could apply in order to reach the same result?

Is it possible that some people are simply unable (not wired right?) to write adventures of any significant ability?

Thing is, most people assume that "writing adventures" simply means that you have everything written down on a script, everyone does their part, and the end has already been decided.

That's kriffin' garbage if you ask me. I have YET to run an adventure, my own or pre-printed, that ran exactly as planned. Players and characters will ignore clues, miss opportunities, tick off an ally, or just trounce around elsewhere making the adventure a moot point.

Example: my first Star Wars game in college was a pre-printed adventure to get everyone together. The party downright REFUSED to take the job, so I had to make an adventure ON THE SPOT. That taught me to be as fluid as possible with any adventure I would write from then on.

I wonder if my mindset is so focused on rules and A-B-C type thinking, that I might be unable to actually create an adventure with options and background... I cannot fathom how to create a set of characters, and how to connect them in ways hte players could discover and use, to reach a conclusion.... could it be that I am simply incapable of doing this?

You may be trying to hard. Honestly. If you are trying to force people to tie together, you're going to come up with reasons NOT to tie them together.

Think of your class at school. People working together at a diner. The people chatting in the aisles at a grocery store. Use those as examples as to how sentients would interact, and you can probably pretty easily link "social ties" together.

If you are rules-centric and not plot-centric, this could really be a problem.

My advice: read books. Just about anything, really, with multiple characters and interactions. If you like Star Wars, then read the Star Wars novelizations of the films. Trust me, you'll see more characters and character interaction, secrets, and the like than we see on film.

As far as stealing ideas go, I have been wracking my mind for films and TV shows that have a story I could lift.... and I am coming up blank.

Maybe someone could give me an example of a film, its basic plot, and how they have (or might) adapt it to a Star Wars adventure, so I might get a glimpse of their thought process.

*cracks knuckles and goes into Librarian Mode*

Buckle up.

First off, Firefly. The entire TV show and, arguably, the film, are just LOADED with idea fodder for Edge of the Empire.

One episode in particular (my favourite, at that) is called "Shindig." You have a crew of people aiming to misbehave being offered a job by a local crime boss. Said job is to go to a fancy party that "you couldn't get an invite with a diamond the size of an elephant's ********" (but the local crime boss has gotten his hand on a couple . .OF INVITES!), get with a noble that has some cargo that he wants to "discreetly" move offworld and convince him to let you take the job.

Of course, things don't go as planned. The crew includes a Companion (think Politico) who is already at the party on the arm of a well known rich and powerful individual. The Captain (think Scoundrel) goes and bring the Mechanic along to appear "proper." Now, the Captain has a thing for the Politico and causes a bit of a ruckus while trying to convince the good Nobleman that he's the man to haul this cargo. This ruckus leads to a sword duel with the Politico's date the following day (note: the Captain is good at Ranged: Light, not Melee). The Politico comes to the Captain that night and offers him a way to escape, but he refuses and instead cashes in some XP to train in a rank of Melee. The duel is a travesty that he nearly gets killed over, but thanks to some fast thinking and talking from the Politico, he gets out of it alive.

Because of his bravery and willingness to fight, the noble lets him take the cargo offworld for him.

The episode ends while they drink wine, recover from major wounds, and look at the cargo: a bunch of cows.

Where it could have diverged

In lots of places, actually.

First off, the Captain could have really ticked off the crime boss (they were already on rough footing as it was) and gotten rejected from the job outright. He could have also refused the job and tried his luck elsewhere on planet, which may or may not have lead to the same conclusion for jobs.

Second, the Captain could have chosen his First Mate (who is married to the Pilot) to join him at this shindig instead of the Mechanic. The First Mate would be classified as a Hired Gun, and she isn't too polite, so any conversation she had could have ended badly and into another possible duel, which may or may not have lead to the cargo being acquired. . .or anyone being alive.

Third, the Captain could have omitted the dueling situation and simply found another way to convince the noble to get the job. Perhaps the noble wanted to meet the Companion, or had an interest that the Mechanic could get him talking about to befriend him, or maybe they were on the same side of the war and didn't know it.

Fourth, the Captain could have ran away from the duel overnight, overpowered any goons that stood in his way to his ship, and blasted off, leaving the whole mess behind (but leaving a planet that he can't return to).

Fifth, the Captain could have come up with a plan and simply murder his opponent with a carefully concealed weapon and ran away like the above.

And on, and on, and on. . .

The more you try to plan for what CAN happen, the less likely you'll be to run it.

I could add other episodes, or shows/movies, but time is running short for me (typing this at the library I work for, and my shift is almost over). Allow me to say this:

0) Rule 0 is, and always will be: Have Fun. This is especially true for GMs; if you aren't having fun, then why are you doing this.

1) There are no rules.

1a) CHEAT ANYWAY!

2) Don't let the rules get in the way of a good time.

3) Stop trying to plan for everything.

4) If you feel like you need to plan for everything, add a few "hooks" to get them back on track should they stray.

5) If you are struggling to get an idea to get the group on a track you want, have a few "hooks" that could be linked together and have the same result. Example: Taking the cargo for a Noble may lead them to the same Rebel Outpost as being hired by a Rebel to obviously deliver an information disk, but they won't know it until it's too late.

OK, All good advice, but not really getting to the crux of my issue... which leads me to believe the following:

Is it possible, that adventure writing, is so individual, that there is no particular method that anyone else could apply in order to reach the same result?

Is it possible that some people are simply unable (not wired right?) to write adventures of any significant ability?

As far as stealing ideas go, I have been wracking my mind for films and TV shows that have a story I could lift.... and I am coming up blank.

Maybe someone could give me an example of a film, its basic plot, and how they have (or might) adapt it to a Star Wars adventure, so I might get a glimpse of their thought process.

I wonder if my mindset is so focused on rules and A-B-C type thinking, that I might be unable to actually create an adventure with options and background... I cannot fathom how to create a set of characters, and how to connect them in ways hte players could discover and use, to reach a conclusion.... could it be that I am simply incapable of doing this?

Many thanks

RD

Hi:

Many many many episodes of "pulp" series such as (the before-mentioned) Firefly , Tales of the Golden Monkey (especially!) have tons of stealable stuff (just lift the whole episode & "starwarsize" it)! Any "heist/caper" movie ( The Italian Job , The Great Train Robbery , for example), or even better, real world heists , would give you stuff to work with. The Transporter franchise.... The Riddick franchise has some stuff in it. S.na.t.ch. , Lock Stock & 2 Smoking Barrels , The Guns of Navarrone , The Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai , Bladerunner , The Maltese falcon ( the idea for Jabba the Hutt came from Sidney Greenstreet's "mafioso"), the list is endless....

Bottom line:

Just check what careers + specializations/motivations/obligations (a must to develop!) your party has & roll with it.

...

I began my EOTE game with the PCs round a table playing a friendly game of sabacc... Almost immediately they started rpging their PCs.

MTFBWY

Always

L

I wonder if my mindset is so focused on rules and A-B-C type thinking, that I might be unable to actually create an adventure with options and background... I cannot fathom how to create a set of characters, and how to connect them in ways hte players could discover and use, to reach a conclusion.... could it be that I am simply incapable of doing this?

Well, some people are better at it (eg: my friend creates better stories than I do), but like anything you can get better with practice.

The core problem, though, seems to be that you're approaching the task as if you're writing a play. It's not a play, it's improv. It's improv, and it would be impossible to plan for everything that could happen. About the most you can do is establish a setting, and then offer characters with problems. If the players take on the task of solving somebody's problem, it doesn't really matter how that is done.

Earlier you said:

Ship something/someone to somewhere.

Collect something from somewhere.

Rescue someone from somewhere

Get info from somewhere/someone

The biggest thing missing from these is the "who". Those are just tasks. The character driving these tasks is the most important part of the game, and once you establish who that is, what their motives are, and a few things that can *possibly* (but not definitely) cause problems along the way, your job is done. Sit back and let the players chew on it and entertain you.

So:

Ship something/someone to somewhere: who wants it shipped? It's a corrupt doctor, working in a corporate lab, stealing secrets for the competition. Why is he doing this? He needs the money, he's a gambling junky and his wife is about to find out how in debt they are. Where is it going? Upscale Coruscant, some parking lot with heavy local police presence. What obstacles are there? The corp might already be on to the doctor, and he can't pay the players from jail, they might have to spring him. The receiving corp might get cold feet, not wanting to be caught up in an espionage scandal. Maybe there's a third corp who also wants the goods. Maybe it's a sting operation, set up by the wife who already knows about the debt, but wants a "cooperation fee". Maybe it's all supposed to go south because the real story is to spring this doctor from jail so he can lead the PCs to a secret stash he made just for such emergencies...

The players won't know most of this, and you can let the story go in any direction you want. You don't even have to decide until they reach a nexus, because there is no A-B-C. If things are going too easily, take it south. If things are getting difficult, ease up a bit. The most important part is you've fleshed out a primary character (and a few secondaries...the wife, the corps, etc), given them motivations, and added a few potential obstacles (any of which might be avoided).

As far as coming up with stories go, steal them. Any episodic TV show or movie can be translated to Star Wars lore. Change the character's names, turn half the humans to a different species, trade in cars for ships and you're almost done. Are you a fan of Lost? Have your character's ship crash on an island where some strange force monster is hunting them down. Fan of Sons of Anarchy, give your PC's swoops, make sure they can't trust any of their so called NPC friends, and steal story lines from different episodes.

.

This so much. My players might not know it, but they're playing through a combination of Firefly and Star Trek: Voyager. It's a space western that centers around a crew of about 30 that are stranded in space (due to being flagged from landing at Imperial planets).

Right on, gang! Cool thread.

whafrog: Thanks for the dropbox links! Good stuff. I also agree that the three-clue rule is a must-read. It totally changed my outlook on GM'ing.

Never Unprepared: The Complete Game Master's Guide to Session Prep was one of my favorites, too. It helped me tweak my notes and, most importantly, analyze my notes to learn what I really, really need in my notes. (Chief among those is a quick list of stats and a bunch of wound boxes in the night's Evernote document, strangely enough.)

I also agree to check with your players. Okay, this link might be useless as a download, but I made a copy of a survey I sent out to my players before we even started... Here's a link to the Google Drive of the actual survey (as opposed to the results). The comments section was my best addition. Someone really just wanted "a gunfight on a speeder", so I found a way to work it in. We get through about three or four scenes in one game night, so it definitely helped me fill out a significant chunk of that particular night.

Star Wars Survey

*(Edit: Phooey. I just tested this link. In order to see all the questions, you have to complete each page. Feel free to fill out the survey. It's a copy & won't go into my players' responses.)

In coming up with ideas, I bought all three of the 100 Adventure Seeds books, as well as Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPC's.

Not surprisingly, the 100 Sci-Fi Adventure Seeds was the most useful.

My crutch is that if the players think of something, I use that as an excuse to avoid it. I will experiment with whafrog's idea of actually using what my player's think might happen. I'm too fixated on surprising them that I forget that maybe they (like most people) like to be right at least once in a while.

Which brings me to my final point: Experiment!!

See how they like a gunfight on a speeder, or a prison break, or banter with a pirate captain, or anything crazy or tame that your mind can come up with. It only needs to carry you through the next session.

Like all the other GM's here, my players derail me all the time, even on the pre-packaged scenarios. That's why I have to come up with the night's game each week, using the clues they've given me, instead of a giant story & sticking to it. Divide your notes into scenes/encounters, and you'll quickly learn how many scenes/encounters you need to set up for the night, limiting your focus to what is absolutely necessary each gaming session & saving yourself a lot of work that could potentially be derailed.

In my notes, however (because we're drawing to a close on "Season 2" of our campaign) I now have a few key elements that I must wrap up before the season's close. I am now using that to draw ideas from for my nights, or "episodes". I'd like to wrap in six more games, and, even though I don't have enough material for six more games, I just know that my players will give me more to work with between now & then.

I'm wondering if I should pack up my notes for a session in a post a file as an example. If anyone wants to see or start a thread where we post 'em, let me know & I'll contribute.

- James

I'm wondering if I should pack up my notes for a session in a post a file as an example. If anyone wants to see or start a thread where we post 'em, let me know & I'll contribute.

good idea. I'm making a thread.

I'm wondering if I should pack up my notes for a session in a post a file as an example. If anyone wants to see or start a thread where we post 'em, let me know & I'll contribute.

good idea. I'm making a thread.

Seconded!

RebelDave, here's my own advice, based on experience and what I've gathered from reading other people's experiences.

It's already been mentioned that you're missing the who for your stories. This is crucial to creating a big overarching story, more than anything else. Once you sit down to game, your players are going to decide what they do, and how they do it. If you already have a bunch of stuff planned, then yes, you will be railroading your players. However, if you have people planned, it doesn't matter what your players do, because those characters you've created will then be able to react. Stories are populated with characters, and those characters are ALWAYS the primary movers of the plot. You're going to want to create some characters and have them fleshed out. WHen your players play a session, consider where and how you can introduce those characters. If your players go somewhere you don't expect, decide which of your characters would be most likely to be related or involved. Or maybe you make up a character on the spot that your players love/hate, and then get to flesh him out. After the session, consider how the players' actions affect the characters you've made, and how they'll react. That will give you the information to introduce new complications in the next session. Maybe your players get bounties on them. Maybe your players get recruited by the Imperials. All kinds of things can happen.

So how do you make these wonderful characters that drive your plot? Someone mentioned the Dungeon World Fronts, which is a good system to build on. Fronts work by having you list some sort of conflict (e.g. the empire is going to invade a peaceful planet), what the ultimate danger is (the enslavement of all the people on the planet), and various steps leading up to that danger that the players can hear about (the empire is acquiring environmental gear that works on that planet, the empire is blockading the planet, the empire is at war with the planet, the planet is making its last stand at the capital, etc.). How do you apply these to your characters? First, give your character a motivation. What is the character wanting to happen? Is he an imperial agent trying to rise in the ranks? Is he a hutt attempting a power grab? Is he a jedi exile wanting vengeance on the empire? Feel free to randomly pick a species and affiliation and then just do stereotypes. Also feel free to do that, but then choose a motivation against stereotypes (hutt abolitionist, rebel officer extorting a planet for resources). Once you have the motivation, think about what consequence of that motivation will affect the players, for good or ill. Maybe the planet being invaded contains something important to a player. Maybe having that officer rise in the ranks will get the players access to more resources. Once you have those, go ahead and write out some first steps in how that character will try achieving the goal. Make those steps things that you know will involve or affect the players. After that, make the later steps be based on what the players have been doing. When you write in a new step, have the players find out about in the next game. Maybe they get a transmission, maybe a contact tells them, maybe the character itself tells them. At this point, you have a story going on. The players may choose not to engage with it, but they will be faced with consequences for not doing so, and you get a story in itself of the players trying to avoid things.

Once you have these characters written up with motivations, consequences, and first steps, you'll want to polish them up with some personality. As others have said, steal these personalities from TV, movies, books. If you want your rebel officer to be like the dude from Firefly, feel free to also do your best Nathan Fillion impression while playing him. As you get practice with using personalities already established in other media, you'll get better at making up your own personalities. Also, keep in mind that humorous personalities are going to have more mileage with players and be easier to play up than serious ones. You can have serious characters, but remember that this is star wars, and your players will be more likely to engage with a character that they find entertaining.

The other thing to keep in mind for these characters is what happens if/when your players kill them. This is where you'll want to have some stats written out (always have something ready for if they're going to directly interact with the players). Also have a consequence that occurs for if players kill this character. This consequence will change as the character gets closer to their goals. Killing that imperial officer at the start of the game may just invoke a bounty. Killing him later in the game may cause a planet to get bombarded in revenge. Don't be petty with these consequences, however, particularly for characters that are opposing your players.

I hope this helps you to sort things out a bit.

@Nimsim, thats great advice, but its creating the links between characters, and the potential plot hooks and events that go with them that I struggle with.

Would you be willing (And anyone else for that matter?) to collaborate on a few sample/test maybe even full blown adventures, many hands make light work after all, and I am sure more than myself would benefit from the results.

If you are, or anyone else is, feel free to drop me a message.

Are they links between NPCs, between PCs, or between NPCs and PCs (or all of the above?). For linking NPCs, you can pretty easily do that by having their goals overlap, or contradict. At that point, you can figure out what resources the NPCs will send toward the goal, and have those ready to deploy in the adventure itself. In general, once you've gotten some of the main characters for your games written up, preparation for a session can be limited to flipping through the corebook or wookieepedia, finding something that sounds cool, and then figuring out how it will relate to the desires of your PCs and one or more NPCs. Introduce these hooks by having your players get anonymous emails on the holonet, hearing from their contacts, overhearing conversation at a cantina, being asked about their involvement by guards, or even just saying at the beginning of a session that the characters have been hearing rumors about X. Leave it to your players to follow the action or not. If they don't follow up on it, ask your players why they didn't. Use that information to change either how you present the rumors (maybe players didn't realize they could go after it) or what hooks you're presenting (maybe players only want to go after bounties). For linking PCs, you have to leave a lot of that to them, but you can help this along by asking asking certain questions. Ask your players about each other's characters (Non Silo notices that Larry Airrunner keeps a weird looking sword hilt with him. What does Non Silo think it is, and if he knows its a lightsaber, how does he know?) Stuff like that will let players consider how their characters interact with each other and encourage them to think about those interactions more.

Yeah, I can try helping with some adventure stuff. Send me a PM for what you want to work on.

you can always also PM me if you want help with adventure preparation.

I made a post similar to this a long while ago (think I did not make it in the GM forums though). It seems GM's that make adventures do not have the trouble that we (people that struggle) do. They try to help but perhaps it is just a disconnect but I for one still struggle. I know when I made my post I was looking for an outline something like this is how we make adventures.

1. Create the bad guy and his goal - this is the plot

2. Create his "gang of bad guys" - these are the npc's your group will do combat with (whether that is actual combat, sneaking by them, or the face talking with them).

3. Create places - where the action/combat/talking/hacking/etc will happen

4. etc

Out of all responses no one has ever given me something like this. Basically I am looking for "here are the steps I use to make adventures" hopefully they will work for you.

I don't get how to connect the dots, how to make hooks, or how to steal from movies/tv shows. I think that is the disconnect. If you tell me to ride my bike to the store, but I don't have one or know what one is, then I can not understand what you are saying. So when told make a hook for your players, to me you might as well be speaking Native American Indian, which is gibberish to me. I do not watch much tv, or movies. The last movie I saw came out in 2002 (staring Toby Maguire). I have never been told about the books mentioned above (never unprepared, play unsafe) I'll see if I can get these from the library.

Until then perhaps we could try to cultivate a post on "These are the steps I take to make an adventure" preferably using an adventure you wrote or are in the process of writing. That way any and all can see all the ways people make adventures, perhaps being able to glean what will work for us from all the options.

Thanks,

J