After what seems a lifetime I finally got some of my D&D group to start to play EotE. The first week was a disaster when all but 1 person showed up which was fine by me so we could work on characters and we used the core books and the Char gen that OggDude made keep up the good work. The following week we had a better showing and my son's friends were eager to try it (they have never played a tabletop game like this...silly kids only played video games and of course they were all COD games...ugg) but after some character creation we started to finally play my story merged with the beginners story which is going off so so.

My son is the party leader (it just turned out that way he is the only one who can pilot the ship since he out ranks the rest of the group in that skill.) I just need to get him to come out of his shell and not let the Med-droid act like the party leader. (yeah I know a droid with a mouth who would have thought?) I took care of that after the game so the next time we play everyone should be on the same page.(a shame that an experienced rpg player would not help a newer player out and just take over like that,as a player I wasn't happy to see that and less thrilled as a father.)but like I said as the DM I have some tricks up my sleeve [insert evil laugh]

My only real question is how do I have the players make spot checks would I make them roll an Intellect check with whatever difficulty it is? EX: 2 intellect (2 green) vs 2 difficulty dice (2 Purple).

This where I wish I had my books available but I assume he'd only roll the 2 green if all his character has is the Intellect at 2 and no Perception skill.

The standard 2 purple dice sounds right for the difficulty, is there anything else you can tell us about his character?

Whats skills did he go for that might be useful in this situation say Vigilance after he didn't say exactly why they needed to spot something?

The question you are asking is not entirely clear to me, so I will try and answer the best I can.

The spot skill is perception check, which is based on cunning. The difficulty is entirely determined by the GM unless opposed by another NPC's actions such as the NPCs stealth to spot a character sneaking around.

To generate a skill dice pool consider the skill rank, and the characteristic associated with the attribute. The higher of the two numbers determines how many green dice (Ability dice), the lower determines how many of those green dice get turned or "Upgraded" to yellow dice (Proficiency dice). Toss in the difficulty dice you determined for this particular check, and any setback dice for external circumstances, and any boost dice for bonuses due to talent, gear, or preperation.

So for example, Luke is on Hoth performing a scouting mission for the rebels. GM George has determined that Luke is going to be ambushed by a Wompa during his scouting mission. The difficulty for spotting the Wompa is average which is two purple dice (difficulty dice). Luke has a 3 in his cunning skill and a 1 perception. so he will start assembling his dice pool with 3 ability dice because of his 3 in cunning, then upgrading one ability die to a proficiency die.

So far his total dice pool is 2 ability dice, 1 proficiency die, and 2 difficulty dice.

But before Luke makes his roll, GM George tells Luke that the Wompa has white fur that allows it to blend in the snow, which will mean a setback die is added to the difficulty. Also the sun is out on Hoth and the sun is glaring off of the snow, adding yet another setback die to the difficulty.

Now Luke's total dice to roll is 2 ability dice, 1 proficiency dice, 2 difficulty dice, and 2 setback dice. Good luck Luke!

Copperbell is right, if the player has no ranks in a skill, he or she will just roll a number of green dice (plus any difficulty dice) as determined by the skill's associated characteristic.

If the character is trying to "notice" something that should be there but isn't, that might fall under the skill of Vigilance.

Happy Gaming.

Just as a word of warning, be careful not to try and make this D&D in space. That's a mistake that a lot of beginners run into, and often leads to a lot of frustration. You'll find this forum has many of that sort of thread. I'd highly recommend you read through the first few chapters of the Corebook (especially 1.Core Mechanic and 3.Skills) as it seems you're used to a slightly different pairing of things, and skills are treated with a somewhat different mindset in this system.

On the "spot check", it depends on what's going on. kaosoe's example with Luke on Hoth is good for how dice pools are built, and factors to take into consideration. To add to it, here's how I delineate between Perception and Vigilance. Perception deals with actively looking for something, while Vigilance is passively noticing something that you weren't looking for. So if you're on guard duty, or you're scrounging through crates, etc., it's Perception. If you're wandering along and you're about to be ambushed, it's a Vigilance check to see if you notice something out of place beforehand.

In any case, welcome to the forums and to the Dark (GM) Side!

Thanks all for the advice. There is no way I could make this D&D in space so far this is much more fun than I have had in awhile even with all the problems, but most of my players are used to the D&D terminology.

So looking at my son's sheet: 2 Cunning and 1 Perception his dice he would be rolling would be 3 green (or 1 green and 1 yellow)and 2 purple

He would be rolling 1 green and 1 yellow.

Since his cunning is higher than his perception, he starts out with 2 green dice when first building his pool, then he upgrades 1 of those green dice to yellow because of his 1 in the perception skill.

Thanks for the help.

So for example, Luke is on Hoth performing a scouting mission for the rebels. GM George has determined that Luke is going to be ambushed by a Wompa during his scouting mission. The difficulty for spotting the Wompa is average which is two purple dice (difficulty dice). Luke has a 3 in his cunning skill and a 1 perception. so he will start assembling his dice pool with 3 ability dice because of his 3 in cunning, then upgrading one ability die to a proficiency die.

So far his total dice pool is 2 ability dice, 1 proficiency die, and 2 difficulty dice.

Hmm, I would've made this an opposed roll - the Wampa's Stealth vs. Luke's Vigilance. Is this type of thing open to GM interpretation, or am I flat-out wrong on that?

So for example, Luke is on Hoth performing a scouting mission for the rebels. GM George has determined that Luke is going to be ambushed by a Wompa during his scouting mission. The difficulty for spotting the Wompa is average which is two purple dice (difficulty dice). Luke has a 3 in his cunning skill and a 1 perception. so he will start assembling his dice pool with 3 ability dice because of his 3 in cunning, then upgrading one ability die to a proficiency die.

So far his total dice pool is 2 ability dice, 1 proficiency die, and 2 difficulty dice.

Hmm, I would've made this an opposed roll - the Wampa's Stealth vs. Luke's Vigilance. Is this type of thing open to GM interpretation, or am I flat-out wrong on that?

That's what I would have done too, but I wanted to simplify the example so that it made sense to the OP.

Ah, gotcha. I'm just gearing up to GM this game for the first time too, and wanted to make sure I wasn't out to lunch there.

Sorry for the double-post (and I don't want to derail the thread, but since we're on the subject), but maybe you guys could check my interpretation of that Wampa scenario:

The Wampa's sneaking up on Luke. It's an opposed roll of his Stealth vs. Luke's Vigilance (and maybe the Wampa gets a boost or two for natural camouflage and/or reduced visibility (this would probably be a secret roll, yeah?). Two possible outcomes:

1. Wampa wins: structured rounds begin, and initiative is rolled between the Wampa's Cool and Luke's Vigilance (a second Vigilance roll for Luke).
2. Luke wins: structured rounds begin, and initiative is rolled between the Wampa's Cool and Luke's Cool.

In the film, the Wampa won the opposed Stealth vs. Vigilance roll AND the initiative roll, used its maneuver to get to Engaged range, and Brawled Luke, knocking him out. Sound about right?

Sorry for the double-post (and I don't want to derail the thread, but since we're on the subject), but maybe you guys could check my interpretation of that Wampa scenario:

The Wampa's sneaking up on Luke. It's an opposed roll of his Stealth vs. Luke's Vigilance (and maybe the Wampa gets a boost or two for natural camouflage and/or reduced visibility (this would probably be a secret roll, yeah?). Two possible outcomes:

1. Wampa wins: structured rounds begin, and initiative is rolled between the Wampa's Cool and Luke's Vigilance (a second Vigilance roll for Luke).
2. Luke wins: structured rounds begin, and initiative is rolled between the Wampa's Cool and Luke's Cool.

In the film, the Wampa won the opposed Stealth vs. Vigilance roll AND the initiative roll, used its maneuver to get to Engaged range, and Brawled Luke, knocking him out. Sound about right?

At this point the rules do not give us much to go by, so it's however the GM wants to play it. Your two outcomes seem the most reasonable, I would also give a boost die to the winner for the initiative roll since structured narrative is going to occur either way.

Well we had a great session 2 weeks ago and as much as I hated it the players thought outside the box to avoid an encounter which I had all planned out a small little fire fight to get them in the star wars groove but they decided to hack their way through and without a slicer which made the difficulty extremely hard and to my dismay the force was with the players not only did he get all triumphs all the difficulty dice rolled blank. Since we are not playing for awhile this gives me extra time to come up with something...something they missed.

So we played on Saturday night I thought I had things in control but seemed I made a mistake on giving them too much money on a bounty they finished they spent a good chunk of the time in the begining shopping and they finally got around to locating the tracking beacon on their ship a good chunk of the the session was wasted even when they went to another planet (Bespin) they spent most of the time shopping looks like I will have to hack into their accounts and take it all to fix this mistake but all in all everything is going according to plan just wish I had 2 or 3 more players to make it a diverse group.Even with all the complaining that was going on when I was getting my group(most of which are hard core into D&D) together not 1 of them has gone for a force sensitive char,which I find funny as all hell cause that was the biggest complaint not enough jedi (I am playing 3 years after ROTJ or 7 years after the battle of Yavin).

Sounds like your group might prefer to be playing Kim Kardashian's Hollywood!

Just joking. There are loads of ways in EOTE to 'money-sink' the players. Starport docking fees, refueling costs, tariffs, etc. These can vary wildly from planet to planet almost arbitrarily.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were,I know I just hit them for 3 grand for repurposing a ship (paint,renaming,cleaning and docking fee.) but the bounty they got was a lot.

Well had to stop playing due to the fact that every time a date is set one of the group can't make it that's is the problem when you have a group of 3 players,with any luck I will be able to get a few more people to play so if 1 can't make it won't stop the game. Plus the fact the group I belong to plays D&D and with version 5 out (at least some of the handbooks that is)they are looking towards that. I did however leave off on a good area where I can add more players....if I find any that want to play.

I'm sorry you and your group had to stop playing Dravin.

Sorry to hear that Dravin! I believe the number one main problem with running an RPG group is scheduling.

Hope you can find a way to play sometime in the future!

I'd offer to do an online game, but I run 2 EotE campaigns as it is..which is partially why I have so many topics asking for advice. XD

Thanks,it is what it is plus this usually happens my main group will play D&D from Sept/Oct till about the beginning of summer and what few of us still wanna play will play and this time I got a few of them to play star wars. normally the group is missing 1 or 2 people out of the 8 that play but for some reason a star wars RPG with new dice and rules freaks them out.....a good chunk of them haven't even looked at the core rules. I guess they are scared of my DMing skills since the last time I DMed a star wars game I tried to modify a game with with simple rules and D20 dice...granted I was given 3 days to come up with stuff and what I did have ready wasn't finished and before that the last time I DMed a game was with the D6 rules which went over great and was a huge group. I guess what really freaked them out is that I was limiting Jedi to 0 since we were playing 3 years after ROTJ they never thought about being force sensitive characters oh well.

Did you ever try running the beginner game?

Maybe one session say "Hey guys, just for today could we spend an hour or two playing this?"

I find it does a great job at soothing people worried about the weird dice.

Yes I ran the beginner game it took me months to get people to play it.