Please forgive me if something similar has been posted, I've read through a ton of threads and not found and answer yet.

I'm the campaign I'm playing in, my Politico has managed to come across enough credits to purchase another Wayfarer. We now have 3 ships in our groupm, 2 Wayfarers and a Shuttle of some sort (GM design). We have a group of 8 playing the game with 2 attending almost at random anymore.

We are looking at crewing our ships. The obvious answer is to just hire npc's, and I will. But what if I want to create a follower or cohort, the way you can do in many other games. I've read the rules for minions and npc's in general, do followers/cohorts follow the same rules?

I've a habit of overthinking things, maybe that's what I'm doing here. But I'd really like to get past this little knot. Absolutely loving the game, our group is having an absolute blast playing it.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Syralus

With GM's permission, just make additional PCs. There's nothing in the game that breaks when a player controls multiple PCs - if the GM wants to allow it.

just out of curiosity how do you your sessions run? I find at around 6 people things start to bog down.

Minions sound good to me. Or a Rival or two. The GM kit is supposed to have rules for running NPC squads, so hopefully that will shed some light on the design philosophy for something like this.

just out of curiosity how do you your sessions run? I find at around 6 people things start to bog down.

Hi, I run sessions for 8 players.

I have to say that the dice system is not prepared for it. You have to drop a lot of the dice pool interpretation, otherwise the game is impossible. The game is still fun, but it is less "special".

just out of curiosity how do you your sessions run? I find at around 6 people things start to bog down.

Hi, I run sessions for 8 players.

I have to say that the dice system is not prepared for it. You have to drop a lot of the dice pool interpretation, otherwise the game is impossible. The game is still fun, but it is less "special".

I don't quite understand. How does the number of players at the table affect the dice system?

I imagine the more players you have, the less time you have to focus on interpreting each one.

It can get to a point where you rely on some stock interpretations.

For instance, the game suggests that both PC and GM make suggestions about possible interpretations, but with 8 people all waiting to get in there and the inherent difficulties in such large groups leading to some people possibly getting sidelined, it can not always be feasible to give the time to interpret.

Plus, there are always some slow peoplewho take 5 minutes to count stuff up!

I play in a group of 8 as well.

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I don't quite understand. How does the number of players at the table affect the dice system?

Aneirin put it quite clear.

As an example, combats with 8 PCs involve a larger number of NPCs, which is translated to a lot of rolls. A lot of advantages, threats, despairs and triumphs are generated (believe me, a lot of them!). There is no time or imagination to narrate every outcome.

Additionally, the game becomes very slow. It takes more time to sort out and read a dice pool than, for example, to read a d100 and see if you rolled above or below your %. Probably with 3-4 players you don't notice, but with 8 you do.

The system presents other issues when playing with such a large group, but I am think that no RPG is really made for such a large number of players. Probably for most RPGs the sweet spot lies between 4 - 6 players, though for a game like EotE, I have the impression the sweet spot lies somewhat in a lower 3 - 5 players.

The system presents other issues when playing with such a large group, but I am think that no RPG is really made for such a large number of players. Probably for most RPGs the sweet spot lies between 4 - 6 players, though for a game like EotE, I have the impression the sweet spot lies somewhat in a lower 3 - 5 players.

3 is magic, at least for me. I could see 4 working, so long as everyone is involved and has something to do. More would be painful I think, and like you say, a lot of the "narrative" stuff would be defaulted to standard interpretations.

But back to the OP, because we've really drifted off topic:

We are looking at crewing our ships. The obvious answer is to just hire npc's, and I will. But what if I want to create a follower or cohort, the way you can do in many other games. I've read the rules for minions and npc's in general, do followers/cohorts follow the same rules?

I guess I don't understand what kind of rules you would need for this. Are you talking about their stats? If so, just grab some minions, plus maybe a rival to lead them, from the back of the core book. Are you talking about loyalty and reliability? That's entirely up to you as a GM. I haven't seen other books with such rules (or I probably ignored them), so I'm in the dark on this.

Just crewing a larger ship, or multiple ships, to me would simply be a matter of bookkeeping and sufficient credits.

I would be careful about adding more PCs, depending on your current group size. Extra PCs makes it less fun, relatively, for each one. It can become a chore. It also leads to less RPing by the player in my experience. It's hard to juggle three different personalities at once.

Make them minion NPC "pets". Yes you can direct them around, but the GM might have some input from time to time. You can also consider that each cohort gives you some sort of bonus, not always acting on his own. FFG's Warhammer narrative system did this and I'm still hoping they will introduce this system later for EotE. For example, you might have an Astromech "pet" that gives you bonuses to astrogation checks, or a shield wielding Gungan follower that gives you a Defense bonus. They would only act on their own when you are the GM saw fit, meaning less time away from the real PCs.

Make them minions and have the GM run them.

Do some RPing / prelude type stuff to hire the crew. Our GM would make up some type of 'mechanic' to determine the quality of the crew.

Something like Leadership vs. PP to hire an average crew. (he would have so much fun with this) Despair (yes he would upgrade) would mean that someone in the crew is not what they appear.

Either split them up evenly among the party, or have the GM run all of them. A PC running a bunch of NPCs can make other players feel less special.

Thanks for all the responses. My GM and I have talked over a few things, still waiting on him to get back to me. I don't really want more than one or two followers. Going to hire any needed crew members to fill holes that are left over after PC's fill them. I was just looking for a set of rules in creating such characters the way many other games have.

We are able to play as a larger group because of our make up. I first started playing with most of our group back in '99. With the exception of 3 people, our group is what is left from an even larger gaming group that was able to make games happen anytime we wanted.

What we have left is a group of people that love to roleplay. We even turned Deathwatch into a roleplaying game where combat played a smaller part than the Roleplay. We all do very well at playing off one another and it makes for amazing times.

We are loving the dice in EotE and loving the roleplay influence it is having. Rolling dice goes every bit as quick in EotE now as it does in any other rpg we play. Learning them took a bit longer, but it's pretty much a breeze at this point. Even our 2 newest additions, both are really new at roleplaying, have picked up on the dice and are getting involved with the story the dice tell right along with the rest of us.

I've found that a larger group has to be made up of people that really play well together, in order to be successful. In the past we had those that loved to rule monger and those that loved to min/max and those that cried and complained whenever they didn't agree with something that happened. Now, we don't have any of that left. If a rules question comes up, we all break out books and discuss it. Not trying to claim we are perfect, we just mesh very well together.

Make them minions and have the GM run them.

Do some RPing / prelude type stuff to hire the crew. Our GM would make up some type of 'mechanic' to determine the quality of the crew.

Something like Leadership vs. PP to hire an average crew. (he would have so much fun with this) Despair (yes he would upgrade) would mean that someone in the crew is not what they appear.

Either split them up evenly among the party, or have the GM run all of them. A PC running a bunch of NPCs can make other players feel less special.

i remember the first time we ran the Beginner's Game adventure and I sliced one of the spaceport security droids against some heavy difficulty and succeeded in making it a minion that i could control. the gm and i quickly came up with a easy system for how this would work, not sure if it was precisely RAW, esp in Beginner's Game context, but it was super enjoyable for the group at the time and that droid ended up causing some interesting havoc for the bad guys.

sometimes you have to just let the game be what's best for you in the moment and then fix it later.

i remember the first time we ran the Beginner's Game adventure and I sliced one of the spaceport security droids against some heavy difficulty and succeeded in making it a minion that i could control. the gm and i quickly came up with a easy system for how this would work, not sure if it was precisely RAW, esp in Beginner's Game context, but it was super enjoyable for the group at the time and that droid ended up causing some interesting havoc for the bad guys.

Not willing to share?