wow...just wow. After reading this I have to wonder Whafrog, who was your GM, King Joffery?

PLAYER 1: Someone must stay with the ship, I guess it's me this time.

GM: Why must someone stay with the ship?

PLAYER 2: Otherwise you'll have a rabid kryate dragon maul the ship to death. We need someome to fly it out when that happens.

GM: Wait a minute, that's not how I run games. If someone stays back I'll have something happen so their player won't get bored. Otherwise nothing will happen to your ship. I'm telling you as your friend, not your GM. I won't do anything to your ship that you wouldn't be able to prevent unless we agree on it.

PLAYER 3: …

PLAYERS 1 & 2: Wait, you're actually a nice person?!?!?!?!?!?!?

I think it is probably worth noting that the GM should not then have a rabid Kryat dragon maul the ship to death. No matter how tempting it is.

If I had a nickel for every time a player was turned off to RPGs because of stupid decisions on the part of bad GMs, I could hire someone to whack all the bad GMs in the world.

My group plays that it's pretty hard to break into a ship. We park the thing and just don't worry about someone breaking in and stealing our stuff because only a super skilled thief could do it. Although, we are paranoid about people putting tracking devices on the ship and we scan for those every chance we get. I guess we've been followed more times than we've had stuff stolen.

We solved it by purchasing a group of Security Droids that stay on the ship. Of course this means the next ship we need to repo/steal/salvage/break into will have some sort of guard droid or animal on it...

I think it is probably worth noting that the GM should not then have a rabid Kryat dragon maul the ship to death. No matter how tempting it is.

What it comes down to is this: is somebody staying behind because they want the story to be about this (somebody trying to steal the ship), or because they DON'T?

Brilliant! I'm going to ask them that exact question at the start of the next session.

If I had a nickel for every time a player was turned off to RPGs because of stupid decisions on the part of bad GMs, I could hire someone to whack all the bad GMs in the world.

If I had a nickel for every time it happened to me personally... I'd donate the 3 or 4 bucks to your "Whack The Bad DMs" fund.

Yeah. I once had a GM fiat the gang **** of my character, and he wanted to roleplay it out. Needless to say, that is one group I no longer even associate with.

If someone does stay behind (either to guard the ship or just because they'd stand out too well in a crowd) you could let them have a say in what's happening with the main group. I've had several sessions with a split party, where each half of the group comes up with a challenge for the other half to overcome, and we bounce back and forth.

They could even control a NPC (preferably one positively disposed to the party) if it seems like the group's trip is taking up too much time and you don't want them to be left out. I had one session where the party split up into three separate groups, and when one became involved in a convoluted brawl that I realized would last the rest of the night, I let the other players control NPCs and gave them brief descriptions of their motivations, rewarding more XP if they roleplayed them well.

Make sure your players are at least okay at roleplaying before you try this though.

Wow, thanks for all the replies! I was honestly expecting a limited response, but this community sure showed me wrong!

I'm leaning at the moment to the excellent suggestion of "do you WANT the story to be about the ship being stolen, or not?" because I hadn't planned on making actually getting into the city be a big deal, they just decided to muck it up. They already have enough problems now getting all the goods into the city without having to worry about the ship.

That being said, the party has expressed they wanted to see more combat, so maybe they will have some characters stay with the ship. We'll see.

The party has no hirelings or droids as this was the very first session :/ They tried to buy an astromech droid at the last spaceport, but botched the rarity roll. I let the scoundrel find a black market one, but they didn't want to buy it because it was sketchy. So it's sorta their own fault they don't have a droid, haha.

So it's sorta their own fault they don't have a droid, haha.

I don't blame 'em though. Never trust a sketchy droid... had one that was basically a rolling bomb sold to us once. The seller knew we were going to a specific planet next to do business with his rival... suffice to say having the new protocol droid attempt to assassinate the guy your trying to do business with makes negotiation rough.

Wow, thanks for all the replies! I was honestly expecting a limited response, but this community sure showed me wrong!

I'm leaning at the moment to the excellent suggestion of "do you WANT the story to be about the ship being stolen, or not?" because I hadn't planned on making actually getting into the city be a big deal, they just decided to muck it up. They already have enough problems now getting all the goods into the city without having to worry about the ship.

That being said, the party has expressed they wanted to see more combat, so maybe they will have some characters stay with the ship. We'll see.

The party has no hirelings or droids as this was the very first session :/ They tried to buy an astromech droid at the last spaceport, but botched the rarity roll. I let the scoundrel find a black market one, but they didn't want to buy it because it was sketchy. So it's sorta their own fault they don't have a droid, haha.

Communication helps a lot.

One thing that we always do as a group is spend the first session making characters together, and discussing what we want out of the game. We talk about themes that are too sensitive for people to want to deal with, the level of grit, action, intrigue, etc that everyone wants. It helps get everyone on the same page and decrease surprise pitfalls like the guy coming to the table of a noir game with a combat monster and then getting frustrated because there's next to no combat.

As Enoch52 said above, trust really is key. Many trouble behaviors come from learned lack of trust in the GM. If you communicate and ensure there is trust between players and GM, then you can focus on having fun rather than dealing with paranoia. I don't know why so many people get into a antagonistic GM vs Player mentality, it always seems to me to be more detrimental to spend your time trying to protect yourself from the GM than fun.

So it's sorta their own fault they don't have a droid, haha.

I don't blame 'em though. Never trust a sketchy droid... had one that was basically a rolling bomb sold to us once. The seller knew we were going to a specific planet next to do business with his rival... suffice to say having the new protocol droid attempt to assassinate the guy your trying to do business with makes negotiation rough.

haha, the players were worried that the droid had a bomb in it. I was like "wtf, why would someone random sell you a bomb?" I was planning on just having the droid be stolen goods, and maybe further down the line there is a subplot where someone tries to steal it back. Oh well. I guess my players paranoia is too strong.

It helps get everyone on the same page and decrease surprise pitfalls like the guy coming to the table of a noir game with a combat monster and then getting frustrated because there's next to no combat.

I think this may have happened to a small extent in the campaign. I think my group is very accustomed to "everything ends in combat", and I'm running a "combat is possible, but try talking first" so the characters who min-maxed combat with no social skills get frustrated when the characters that had a more balanced spread of abilities talk or stealth their way out of combat. I'm going to try and mix some more "unavoidable" combat encounters so the droid hired gun can actually hit someone with his vibro-ax

Wow, thanks for all the replies! I was honestly expecting a limited response, but this community sure showed me wrong!

…

You are wrong, wrong you hear me? lol

Glad we could prove you wrong in a positive way!

-EF

I think this may have happened to a small extent in the campaign. I think my group is very accustomed to "everything ends in combat", and I'm running a "combat is possible, but try talking first" so the characters who min-maxed combat with no social skills get frustrated when the characters that had a more balanced spread of abilities talk or stealth their way out of combat. I'm going to try and mix some more "unavoidable" combat encounters so the droid hired gun can actually hit someone with his vibro-ax

One of the things I find helpful to keep in mind when I am GMing is that there are 2 general reasons a player comes to the table with a character who is built to excel in an area;

• They want to be challenged in this area
• They don't want to be challenged in this area

Conversation at the getgo really helps sort this out. Is the guy coming to me with a combat monster because he enjoys combat, or because he has learned from a previous GM that he'll die if he doesn't? Am I being presented with the super hacker because this player is really interested in play revolving around hacking and information handling, or because he wants to make sure he doesn't have to worry about it?

The sooner you can diagnose which of these is the case, the sooner the game can move into fun for everyone territory.

One trick you could try for your social/fighter mixing is have NPCs who are willing to negotiate, but a truly successful resolution requires a duel between your champion and theirs. That's boring if you pull it out as a matter of course but it couild be an interesting segue for the moment.

On the one hand I wouldn't worry about splitting the party per se, because as others have mentioned, in Star Wars the climax is almost always 2 or 3 different simultaneous adventures.

However, one guy standing next to the ship as a guard doesn't really constitute an adventure. I agree that it's OK to tell the players, "You can lock your ship" or just saying "I'm not going to steal your ship".

So... What if they got this droid to guard their ship and, as soon as they leave the droid alone in it, the droid steals the ship? It takes the ship to a secret "salvaging" operation. Eventually, the guardbot is put back on the market to be sold as a ship protector to some other sucker...

I think someone used a real-life destiny point on our campaign - I realized I had been reading my notes wrong, and given them the wrong name of the planet. Lo and behold, it turned out one of the players actually had generated the planet as his homeworld from one of those random generator things before the campaign started!

It was written out on his character sheet and everything. This planet (Aduba) has four paragraphs on Wookiepedia. We all had a big laugh over the coincidence, and ruled that with a destiny point, he could call some old buddies to watch the ship as the party got embroiled in their next adventure.

Crazy.

I think someone used a real-life destiny point on our campaign - I realized I had been reading my notes wrong, and given them the wrong name of the planet. Lo and behold, it turned out one of the players actually had generated the planet as his homeworld from one of those random generator things before the campaign started!

It was written out on his character sheet and everything. This planet (Aduba) has four paragraphs on Wookiepedia. We all had a big laugh over the coincidence, and ruled that with a destiny point, he could call some old buddies to watch the ship as the party got embroiled in their next adventure.

Crazy.

That is so beyond awesome. XD