Hey guys.

Awhile back we had almost an intermission episode where everyone wanted to spend their credits and time inbetween jobs on a station to purchase some new gear.

Normally I wouldn't mind, but everyone needed to get pretty much entirely new weapons and armor which was costly, time consuming...and in my opinion tediously boring.

I also think it's a little bad that players have a shopping list ready to go of what they want.

How do you guys manage the party buying new gear?

Do you restrict how much they can buy?

Furthermore, I have a player who has an amazing gun, it is his favourite thing ever in the game to be able to shoot and do 18+ damage to any adversary I throw at him. Yet whenever I even hint at the idea of a despair or two causing the gun to fail or even be destroyed, I am criticised and made to be the bad guy citing that he spent so much money and time on the weapon that it makes all that time pointless and it's a '**** move'. Thoughts?

The only restriction I place on my players is money and rarity. If they have the cash to buy it and make the Negotiation (or Streetwise) check to find it, then they're welcome to it. That being said, I only make them roll for stuff with rarity 6+ (in the core rules) or 4-5+ (the various splatbooks).

You need to remember that players - all players, in all game systems - love kitting out their characters. It's a big part of the RPG experience, just like increasing skills and learning new talents. You start out with a crap blaster and heavy clothing, and eventually you have a tricked-out supergun and modded heavy battle armour. If players weren't meant to have gear, FFG wouldn't have included it in their books.

This is one of those situations where you as a GM just have to choke back the boredom and let them enjoy themselves. My advice for making it a more painless experience is to not have them roll for trivial gear so things will go faster. The whole thing really shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes, especially if they know in advance what they're after. If you want to spice things up a little, have some Threat on a Negotiation check result in an encounter of some kind - an NPC bidding on the same item one of the players are after, some thugs looking to shake down the guys spending money like water, or a merchant being raided by the law just as the PCs are ponying up their cash.

If you're having a dull time watching them roll to add mods to attachments over and over, I recommend my own house rule: any gear with an attachment must be used actively for at least one encounter before another mod can be added. It keeps my players from making umpteen checks in a row, and it makes power progression a little more measured.

Oh, I'm not bored at all! However I can tell there are people of the group who had the look of "Can we just move on please" on their face.

I don't really like the idea of shopping Amazon for guns. I prefer to just have some equipment found throughout the game. Then if one gun or piece of equipment becomes problematic it's less painful if it dies during an encounter since it's known new gear will be available as the game progresses.

It also always seems somewhat contradictory in an evil galactic empire where the Sith lord is intent on controlling all things that he might wanna keep an eye on the machine guns and the explosives............

I don't really like the idea of shopping Amazon for guns. I prefer to just have some equipment found throughout the game. Then if one gun or piece of equipment becomes problematic it's less painful if it dies during an encounter since it's known new gear will be available as the game progresses.

This is exactly how I like to run things.

Although, If their heist plan goes right, my players are expecting a HUGE payoff. This will be the biggest load of credits I think they'll ever see. I'm curious to see how they intend to spend it.

Why would it be bad to have a shopping list of items they want? I'm kind of a shopaholic, I usually have a 'wish list' of items that I'd like to buy next whenever I get the free cash.

Whether or not they're able to locate and purchase these items is another question. That's where Negotiation comes in...

Why would it be bad to have a shopping list of items they want? I'm kind of a shopaholic, I usually have a 'wish list' of items that I'd like to buy next whenever I get the free cash.

Whether or not they're able to locate and purchase these items is another question. That's where Negotiation comes in...

Ehhh, as long as it is role played, otherwise the dice rolling of Negotiation done in a narrative vacuum seems like pointless tedium to me. They just keep going to merchant after merchant in session after session until they get what they want, so what's the point of the dice at all? Dice rolling should be part of the story, not just an antiseptic mechanic in conjunction with math. Just my opinion.

2P51, if I wanted to speed up the process and not roleplay every interaction, I would consider one Negotiation check to cover the entire process of investigating, locating a dealer, negotiating for price, and the result.

So one die roll could cover several hours. "You work your way through a variety of shops, until eventually you find one with the item you're looking for. You both haggle over price, you putting on your best poker face and the shopkeeper arguing that the item is the finest example of its kind in the Outer Rim.

"Based on the 3 Success and 2 Threat of your roll, you manage to find the item at a better price than expected, but it's a bit worn around the edges and you feel like it would be worth having a mechanic take a look at it before you put your life in its hands."

Just like how one Streetwise or Knowledge check can be used to cover several hours or days of investigation.

If you want to spend the 30 or more minutes going from shop to shop, of course that's an option too, just like you could roleplay every visit to a bar or library that your characters undertook.

That's the great thing about skill checks in this system, they work both ways!

What if they fail the roll?

We'll, this where it becomes fun with this dice system. I am assuming all items are illegal to a point they are trying to buy. So...

If a Threat or two are rolled, perhaps they only have one of these items in stock, and another buyer comes along and offers some more money for it. A rival dealer threatens the players, authorities could be tipped off as to what is going down, or perhaps the dealer is selling this information out to the Imps. If a Despair comes up, then the whole deal goes south, and they may have to fight their way out, perhaps after the money has been exchanged and before they get their items. If advantages are rolled, then perhaps a rival dealer/other customers talk about a guy who has a better deal. Maybe they get a free holster with the purchase, or a free blaster repair kit, a spare clip or two. Perhaps they caught the dealer when he really has to move these hot items, he can't have them sitting around much longer, so he is dropping the price a little to move them faster. On a Triumph, perhaps the dealer just made a huge score of items and is selling everything half off, or buy in get one free.......

A Lifeday sale in July!! This is madness! Everything must go! Of course they will have the intergalactic proton powered electrical tentacled advertising droids there to showcase this huge event!!

What if they fail the roll?

Lots of options:

- they don't find the item they were looking for

- they find one, but it's much more expensive than they wanted to pay

- they find one but it doesn't work, needs extensive repairs, and the owner still charges an arm and a leg

The PC can then decide whether to go ahead and buy it under those circumstances, or to wait and try again in another setting (possible on another planet or another city, or just after some time has passed).

A failed skill check in the SW system doesn't necessarily mean a flat-out failure in every possible sense.

Just like if you fail an Athletics check jumping across a chasm it doesn't necessarily mean you fall to your death. You might just barely grab the ledge and take some strain damage, you might fall onto a ledge below, one of your party might narrowly grab your hand as you miss the ledge, and so on.

I'm away from my book but if I recall correctly, the description under Negotiation even calls out "they find one but it costs much more than they were hoping to pay" as a possible outcome for a failed check.

Here's a relevant Skill Monkey segment on Negotation, which also mentions some of the options I did:

http://www.madadventurers.com/skill-monkey-buying-a-droid/

What if they fail the roll?

Lots of options:

- they don't find the item they were looking for

- they find one, but it's much more expensive than they wanted to pay

- they find one but it doesn't work, needs extensive repairs, and the owner still charges an arm and a leg

The PC can then decide whether to go ahead and buy it under those circumstances, or to wait and try again in another setting (possible on another planet or another city, or just after some time has passed).

A failed skill check in the SW system doesn't necessarily mean a flat-out failure in every possible sense.

Just like if you fail an Athletics check jumping across a chasm it doesn't necessarily mean you fall to your death. You might just barely grab the ledge and take some strain damage, you might fall onto a ledge below, one of your party might narrowly grab your hand as you miss the ledge, and so on.

It's an explanation of the roll but I'm not hearing any role playing. Did they develop this contact/merchant through gameplay? Is this person going to be a recurring contact? If the answer is no then it just strikes me as rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice. It doesn't matter whether it's a single roll representing a sped up large portion of time or not. I just don't want gear purchases relegated to looking up prices in the book and rolling dice. That doesn't mean it has to be something separate from the main story though. Both can occur at once it just seems like some people go through an adventure, get their credits, now it's time to go to nameless merchant X and spend the credits as if the story and role playing stopped at payday. I would prefer the source of gear and the benefactor of the players mission be relevant to one another.

*shrug* you are obviously welcome to play your game however you feel suits you and your players best.

I was using general descriptions but not transcribing literally every single line that would be spoken by the players and GM in the scenarios I was describing.

The whole spectrum of scale is available to you as a tool to use wherever you feel it's appropriate, from 'micro' skill checks in which you roleplay out every aspect of the scenario to 'macro' checks where you speed the session along over some aspects that don't necessarily need such a detailed treatment.

If you don't care to use Negotiation on a 'macro' scale, that is of course your prerogative. I feel it's a valid and valuable tool in cases where you and your players might want to try buying some equipment but maybe you have 2 hours to play and don't want to spend 45 minutes of it on roleplaying every single purchase they make.

If you've got 5 players and they each want to buy a weapon, perhaps some armor, maybe one or two of them want to buy a speeder, and a couple of them want assorted pieces of gear, and you're insistent on roleplaying every minute detail of these interactions, you could be looking at 2 hours of roleplay... for my group, that's an entire session.

It's a perfectly valid way to play this game to roll a Negotiation check and come up with an NPC and a transaction on the fly based on the results. Depending on the roll, the NPC *could* actually become a regular contact. A Triumph on a Negotiation check could make you a personal favorite of this vendor so they might even contact you again in the future with special deals.

These kinds of things are only limited by your ingenuity as a GM. But again, you can play however you want to play. I'm just suggesting options.

Also, I don't know about you but in my personal life I have bought things from people with whom I didn't have significant and memorable interactions.

I remember my conversations with the guy I bought my car from, but I bought some records last week and some books the week before that, and I don't have any memory of who I bought them from or what was said as part of the transaction.

I basically "went to nameless merchant X and spent the dollars". Sometimes this is an appropriate level of detail to bring to a roleplaying game, especially when the subjects of the game are adventurers and they want to spend their time adventuring.

My apologies the original poster I didn't mean to get off on a pointless tangent.

If players are just going to buy equipment then I like to integrate whomever they're going to buy the equipment from into the main story and the thrust of what it is they're actually doing during the session. For example they've been hired by the brother of an arms merchant to rescue the arms merchant from some rival gangster. As a result of that session the arms dealer then becomes a regular contact for the purchase of equipment. This way the whole aspect of buying weapons and equipment hasn't just been relegated to meaningless dice rolling making purchases from a merchant they don't know the name of and couldn't care less about. It integrates their source of equipment into their personal stories and thereby creates meaning for them as opposed to simply rolling dice for the sake of rolling dice and making a purchase on planet X from merchant Y.

That is cool, but of course it is pretty obvious and clear that the method I was describing can be used to reach the same end.

It's possible to walk into a store you've never been in before and develop a relationship with the merchant who runs that shop. Even if you're just doing a general Negotiation check like I've described, if you are a GM with imagination you can develop that into a fun and memorable interaction with an NPC who can become part of the world of your players.

If not, then of course I can understand how that would be difficult.

I have a hard time believing that you really insist that your players roleplay out ever single detail of every interaction with an NPC in such a case and that you never use narrative ellipsis to just indicate that some time has passed or some things have been accomplished.

The conversation isn't about every single detail of every single interaction in game. It's about buying gear/guns and how I don't want that to be like looking up items on Amazon. Buying gear is a significant part of character advancement and I simply want the significant parts of character advancement to be significant and story driven.

I think we just have a difference in style, then. I've definitely done what you are suggesting, that is, incorporating acquiring gear into something that is done in roleplay through existing NPCs that are part of the PCs' network.

However, I also have faith in my ability as a GM to make a memorable experience for the PCs using a more general approach when we don't necessarily have 30 minutes to roleplay out getting a couple of new blasters or a new datapad.

You're assuming I would spend 30 minutes to role play this out. I wouldn't. That's my point. I wouldn't roll the dice for sake of rolling the dice. When I started my group out, they didn't just get a ship, it was part of the initial sessions. They did a job for a benefactor (Doc from the Han Solo novels) and he hooked them up with a ship as payment. I don't just roll the dice to find stuff as an administrative function, I wouldn't bother,if I wasn't going to role play it I'd be more inclined to just say, 'you're at Bob's guns, everything non restricted is available, minus explosives and pirated copies of Game of Thrones', or something like that and be done with it.

This is exactly how I like to run things.

Ditto. I keep them on the run, letting them "find" things, like Superior padded armour in the locker before the bridge on the Sa Naloar, or a few pieces of good equipment among the mostly "inferior" stuff in the cargo holds of the Zygerrian ship they just took over. But they've had yet to make planetfall and get close to a mall without something happening to drive them on.

If you really want to limit the downtime you experience from Shopping you can simply say that anything with Rarity lower than X is available and that they can buy it at the listed price between sessions if they want.

You could include mods in that as well, obviously you'd need to wait to apply the mod till a session was completed but at least they could do the shopping first.

On the other hand, shopping is fun. Maybe not as much fun for the GM, but I personally love getting to spend my hard earned credits.

Maybe have some cookie cutter shopping "mini-sessions" on hand at all times to cover it. Add some enrichment, maybe even some hardline negotiation and roleplay during the shopping.

"ohhh, looking for a Marksman Barrel eh? You're in luck, I'm the only shop in Mos Espa who has one! 2000 credits and she's yours!"

Nobody has touched on the big ******-y gun problem.

You don't have to destroy the PCs gun. I have a big game hunter with a +5 slugthrower of everything killing, and a BH/Assassin with a jetpack and a flame projector in the party. When they start to do too much crazy, I have a few things I use to limit that.

I like to put them very close and/or far away from the action when I can. He invested in a long-range capable PC, so I shorten the distance. It makes him duck for cover and squirm like a fish. That way, I can put enemies within engaged, making his gun risky to use. For the flame projector, keep the enemies far away. That way, she has to risk getting close.

I use dynamic battlefield elements to limit the swath of terror. PCs are not the only ones who use cover, so I create terrain features and visual obstacles to cut off line of site. That way, they can only take out one or two enemies before having to re-position. Again, creating challenge and risk. This also gives the rest of the group a chance to have an equal impact.

Put them in situations where they are not allowed to carry their fave weapons. A spaceport that enforces a hand gun only rule of law, or a settlement that abhors violence of any kind. My PCs love their "signature" weapons like blank-ies. Take their woobies away and watch how nervous they get. That gives you opportunities as a GM to create encounters that force the group outside their comfort zones and thinking creatively. It also has the effect of causing the players to diversify XP spending, so that they are better prepared to deal with adverse conditions next time.

Use adversary talents! Use lots of setback dice! Give him great armour, superior weapons and Adversary 3! Go overboard on Brawn and Agility and make him the impossible killing machine. Create an encounter that HAS to be solved by other means, making the BFG 9000 a sideshow novelty at best.

Last but not least, use the despair to disable the weapon. It runs out of ammo. It gets jammed. etc. Disable it for one, two or even three rounds. Give the adversary a chance to do some real damage or make an epic escape. That way you are not being called out as a ****, because you have not taken away the weapon. What you have done is make the challenge an ACTUAL CHALLENGE.

However, one PCs weapon should not be the centerpiece and focus of each combat. It just makes it boring for everyone else.

If nothing else, be a **** and take away the shiny. If it is seriously derailing fun and challenge, it is no longer fun and challenging. Even the player will get bored with the kill everything stick after a while, so just speed up the process. If breaking the gun is breaking the game for the little whiner, then perhaps that person needs to find a different group to play with. Tell them that. Your weapon is so awesome. So great, that you are sucking the fun out. Don't break the weapon, but outfit an adversary with the SAME weapon. Then kill the PC instead. You're not a **** because you did not destroy the weapon. Turn about is fair play.

Well, i do tell my players to make a wishlist of items and gear they want to buy. That list gets bigger by every encounter where they realise that they are missing something that would make things easier for them.

If they have the cash, time and are at the right place they get to roll their dice to find the wanted pieces.

Depending on the result all kinds of things can happen, ranging from raids/shootouts to sidequests to added boni.

I tend to make little to no fuss about legal items under rarity 6, but restricted items and high rarity i do put some thought into it.

And befriending the shopkeepers is up to my players, not me.

If the shopkeepers want something from the PCs it's a (side)quest, purely optional.

Due to the style of our game we handle gear acquisition off screen, with a negotiation roll to determine price.

But I do have a gun nut Bounty Hunter whose character is molded around his tricked out Heavy Blaster Rifle. I pulled the d*** move and robbed him of his sweet gun, but sometimes it's the only option that makes sense. He leapt out of a building, into an airspeeder (Clone wars style gunship) and one of the troops rushed him. Since I knew he would plug the guy point blank I had the trooper use his advantage to knock the heavy blaster rifle out of the gunship. So now we had the bounty hunter grappling hand to hand on the edge of a 1,000 foot fall - much more interesting than just rolling another ranged heavy check.

It's definitely something I wouldn't recommend doing often, but being reminded that gear isn't permanent encourages players to carry alternative equipment, and appreciate the nice gear they can hold onto.