So I ran the beginners game yesterday for the first time with my friend and both my kids playing. I have never been the GM of anything before and I really enjoyed. My kids actually were better at it than I thought which really helped.

A few observations that made me wonder if I was doing anything wrong and I would appreciate any input on.

At the cantina the guards were really easy to kill. They were treated as one person, is that correct? Essentially my son used his blaster damage of 6/7 and then the added successes and they were gone.

Players chose to use the computer skill on droids rather than other coerce type skills to convince them to let them past or help them. Is that OK?

My guys decided to take the encounter at the Krayt Fang first and pretended to be engneers, they fixed the device before unlocking the clamps and taking off.

I'm now looking to play it with a few adults next and might run this game again, but will want to go longer term with it. Should I invest in the main rule book now or will what I have suffice. I am guessing I can't create my own characters with out the main rules as they will explain this will they?

Thanks

At the cantina the guards were really easy to kill. They were treated as one person, is that correct? Essentially my son used his blaster damage of 6/7 and then the added successes and they were gone.

Minions can be run as a single group or as individual characters. It depends on the abilities and skills you want out of them. When grouped their wound threshold is combined. So when you do enough damage to exceed the treshold of a single group member he's removed, but the rest of the group keeps going until you've done enough damage to exceed their total WT.

Also don't forget soak.

Players chose to use the computer skill on droids rather than other coerce type skills to convince them to let them past or help them. Is that OK?

Its up to the GM. No right or wrong here.

My guys decided to take the encounter at the Krayt Fang first and pretended to be engneers, they fixed the device before unlocking the clamps and taking off.

No problem here, end result is pretty much the same.

I'm now looking to play it with a few adults next and might run this game again, but will want to go longer term with it. Should I invest in the main rule book now or will what I have suffice. I am guessing I can't create my own characters with out the main rules as they will explain this will they?

Yes get the book. Though be warned, the pregens in the starter are not proper starter characters, and the rules in the starter are simplified, so when you start rolling with the main book things will be a little different.

OK

Are their pregens in the main book? Any adventures too?

OK

Are their pregens in the main book? Any adventures too?

No pegens, but there's an adventure there too.

Also, the beginners box has a followup adventure online.

There's another free adventure they made a year ago which has pregens available as well.

Great thanks.

With regards to the "Did I do it OK?" questions, the answer is "Did your players want to come back and revisit the game world?".

With my guys I gave them all the Pre-Gens in the box set and available on-line at the time. I also gave them a chance to spend some time with me before the game began to modify their choice (making it rules legal) or create their own character. So that once we sat down for the first game everyone had a character ready to go.

I also pointed out to them that they had been together as a group for a while and should anyone want to have a "flash back" they could use that to explain character behaviour or previous relationships with each other. Because the box set starts "in medias res" the players can easily play into that and you avoid the whole "what is my motivation" that you get if you put all the players in a bar somewhere.

Now the $60 question is to get the rules or not. I don't want to tell you yes or no as that will depend of a few issues.

First: Will you and your players get enough game time to make the cost worth while? If it costs you $20 to go to the movies, then will you get at least three movies worth of entertainment from this? I enjoy reading the books as they stand so for me this is a no "brainer". I have and will continue to buy everything.

Second: Will a continuity break affect the way you and your players see things. If you run the box set and move into the printed follow up what happens if the players now roll up new characters? I know my guys having played RPG's before would enjoy playing the same character from the word go, they worked together to ensure the "role overlap" was minimal and that they had what they wanted.

Finally: While it won't affect the boxed set game, if you would like to side track or give flesh to parts of the game that isn't fleshed out having the rules could help there.

For me <waves hand> "These are the rules you have been looking for."

I'm now looking to play it with a few adults next and might run this game again, but will want to go longer term with it. Should I invest in the main rule book now or will what I have suffice. I am guessing I can't create my own characters with out the main rules as they will explain this will they?

I'd run the new players with the pregens, but you *will* want the Core book, and as noted by Ghostofman, the pregens are slightly different. For example, there are six or seven Knowledge skills, not just one.

I had my players start with the pregens, they liked them so much they all kept them. I ended up converting them to the full rules using this program:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/89135-another-character-generator/

I think I had to give a few characters 5 or 10XP extra just to make it all fit, but it's not a big deal.

Players chose to use the computer skill on droids rather than other coerce type skills to convince them to let them past or help them. Is that OK?

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that the players wanted to use the Computers skill when talking to droids (instead of Charm/Coerce/Negotiation/et cetera)?

If so, you shouldn't permit this again in the future (at least not under normal circumstances). That's not what the Computers skill does. The Computers skill covers the usage of computers (e.g. programming and slicing). When merely talking to a droid, he functions just like any other person. So attempts to persuade or manipulate him would involve the same social skills as would be used on a biological person.

Players chose to use the computer skill on droids rather than other coerce type skills to convince them to let them past or help them. Is that OK?

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that the players wanted to use the Computers skill when talking to droids (instead of Charm/Coerce/Negotiation/et cetera)?

If so, you shouldn't permit this again in the future (at least not under normal circumstances). That's not what the Computers skill does. The Computers skill covers the usage of computers (e.g. programming and slicing). When merely talking to a droid, he functions just like any other person. So attempts to persuade or manipulate him would involve the same social skills as would be used on a biological person.

Overmatt's right, but you can still be somewhat creative with your use of skills within reason. For example, the players could have used computers to hack the repair shop's system to send a message to the docking bay that they're sending over technicians with the part. That in turn would add one or more boost dice to any deception check against the droid guards in my opinion.