Hey guys! So my group finally ran the Beginner game last night, loads of fun, and I think I might be cut out for this GM thing after all.

I've got a table of five players, only one of which is an experienced roleplayer, and one other who's done some of it. I've got three newbies to the hobby, which is quite fun.

They started in the cantina, and handily dispatched the Gammorrean thugs per expected. Only the wookie took a hit and 41 Vex patched him up in combat on a single roll. Sasha has already gained fame as a Han Solo esque character, since she rolled nothing but advantages for the first three rounds. Hilarity.

Then they split up right away, which I thought was really interesting, since normally that's not a behavior seen at the table, and Lowhhrick and Mathus went to get the HMRI while Pash, Sasha, and 41-VEX went to handle spaceport control. They wheedled the old man down to 600 creds, after failing to convince him they were representing Trex. Then Sasha found the side door to spaceport control, 41-VEX failed a slicing roll, but Sasha picked the lock with a boost from 41-VEX's advantage. Pash then smooth-talked Brynn and they handily got the docking clamps off.

Meanwhile Mathus decides to go talk to the droid in the junkyard, takes of it's restraining bolt, and proceeds to convince it to join the crew. Threat from earlier manifested in the droid's excitement alerting the old man in the shop, who stumbled outside. Lowhhrick was standing watch, and roared at the old man, who ran off screaming for Stormtroopers. Panicking, they hoofed it to the hanger bay after radioing the other group to head there as well. The droid, who is now known as Katy, followed them along.

They ran into stormtroopers on the way, but ran off through the alleys under pursuit. They decided to lose them in Shantytown, and I had them roll Athletics for the rickety bridges. Sasha pulled a triumph on the first roll, and asked for the bridge to fall after them which seemed reasonable.

They finally made it back to the landing bay, talked their way past the droids by claiming to be there to install the HMRI, then convinced Trex of the same story. They all got in the ship, locked the door behind them, and started installing the HMRI while Trex was watching. Pash ran to the cockpit and got the ship running, which alerted Trex to what was going on. A tussle broke out in the Engine Room, The wookie killed Trex really emphatically via Vibro-axe to the back, and they lifted off into glory.

We had to end there, so they'll be coming back to a Tie Fighter battle, which should be really interesting. Overall great night, and they killed the adventure a lot faster then I expected. I'm quite excited to see what hijinks they get up too.

Comments welcome, things I could have improved or done differently. I was also wondering, since one of my players (Mathus) expressed dissatisfaction with their ship being a YT-1300 since he views them as Millenium Falcon clones. Does anybody know which splat or region books would be best to get to give them some more ship options outside of the ones in the CRB? I'm looking for one to give them once they make real characters in the regular system after we run Long Arm of the Hutt.

My players hated the YT1300 for the same reason, so they used it as a weapon and flew it into a Hutt Palace to kill the Hutt. Epic way to finish off a boss and get rid of a burden they didn't want.

I ended up drafting up a vehicle, and having a wealthy benefactor loan it to them while they were doing missions for him. They ended up stealing and keeping it.

Here's an idea though. Make them keep the ship for now. If you plan on playing more, you'll likely be picking up the main source book right. In the next adventure you do, have something spectacularly bad happen to the ship. During their next stop at a large spaceport, it gets stolen, or it gets impounded by Imperial forces as it's stolen and a known smuggler ship. They lose any ability to regain access to it, and now they are stuck. Likely not enough money to buy a new ship, so...

Hopefully they'll come up with the idea to steal a ship. In the EotE book, it tells you to grant the player group one of a couple vehicles. So it would be easy enough to have those vehicles at the spaceport, and now they need to figure out how to steal one. Don't make it impossible to do, but if they can't find a way to do so stealthily, then they earn a little more obligation as they are wanted for stealing a ship.

Really, I think all of the books thus far have at least a couple of ships in them. It really depends on what you want to give them before you go looking. Longer ranged, smaller ships will be in the scouts books, more utilitarian (and nicer) ships will be in the colonist, heavy hitters in the Hired Gun and so on.

As far as what you did, it looks fine to me. I don't see any red flags or things I would have done differently.

Where did they get 600 credits?

Besides that, sounds like a great time. The CRB suggests giving starting groups a YT-1300, a Firespray 31, or a Wayfarer Medium Transport.

Every book so far has had at least a few small ships big enough for a party to operate out of.

I like it! It sounds like you've got a good group of players, and handled the game (both on and off rail portions) very well. In particular I like the way y'all handled advantage, threat and triumph - something that can trip up even experienced GMs. I look forward to hearing later adventures. And encourage them to keep with splitting the party! This opens up so many opportunities as a GM, and can really make the game more dynamic and interesting. It also makes games that require multiple simultaneous actions (you distract them while I sneak in) or similar situations possible.

As noted above, you can let them know that the ship is undoubtedly going to be registered as stolen very soon, and they won't be able to land at a civilized starport without having it seized by the Imperials. In our group, we ended up selling it (and the Kryet Fang II, which we also stole from Trax in the next adventure) to a chop-shop so we could buy a "clean" starship from a respectable dealer. This gives them a good IC reason to get rid of a ship they already want to get rid of OOC.

This is also where you might want to have a quick OOC discussion with everyone about which way they want to take the game. Or this can happen semi-IC when they're at the used ship lot. The ship they end up with can have a pritty significant influence over the nature of the game. Firesprays put you in a bounty hunter gig, Medium Transports put you in the "Space Trucker" kinda game (and are good if they make a habit of picking up NPC allies), a small light freighter pushes smuggling or courier missions, Scout ships reinforce the explorer idea, etc.

Best of luck! I look forward to hearing where this game goes.

One thing that often surprises people is the space encounter in the beginner game. As written, it's a bit bland, because it is fairly basic and doesn't have any terrain in space (like asteroids, nebula, debris fields, ship traffic, etc) so it can be either very deadly or boring, depending on how the rolls go.

My group hosed the TIEs in a round or two with essentially no damage to their ship. Was rather anticlimactic.

Yeah, that can happen. It can also go the other way, though not as easily. If the players don't push/ask, it's worth reminding them that everyone can take an action, it's not just up to the pilot & gunners. Really, the biggest advantage Light Fighters have over fighters is in Action Economy - the can simply take more actions per turn! Make sure that Vex & even Katy are taking actions.

The YT-1300 actually turns out to be one of the best ships in the game, when it comes to being able to put attachments on it and modify it heavily.

The YT-2400 is also pretty good in that regard, but not as good as the YT-1300. The YT-2400 does have the advantage of having bigger laser cannons, however.

Basically, anything in the 100,000 Credit range is valid, and there are a lot of ships to choose from. You can pretty easily justify lots of other ships up to about 500,000 credits, too. You just need to be more careful what you give them in that range.

Anything up to about five or six crew can be handled exclusively by PCs, and if they need more crew than that then they can hire NPCs or buy droids, etc…. There’s lots of Silhouette 4 and 5 ships that fall into that range.

Myself, I also like the 4R3 Light Assault Transport, the ILH-KK Citadel-class Light Freighter, the Incom A-36 Pathfinder-Class Force Reconnaissance Vessel, the J-type Star Skiff, the Loronar E-9 Explorer-Class Armed Long-Range Scout Vessel, the YG-4400 Light Freighter, and the YT-1210 Small Transport, among others. Each of them is somewhat better in some areas than the others — some are more heavily armed and armored, some are faster, some have more hard points available for your own attachments and modifications, etc….

See http://swrpg.viluppo.net/transportation/starships/?order_by=silhoutte&flattened=true for a long list of possibilities. Feel free to click on the headings for the various columns to sort by other fields, like cost, number of crew, etc….

Oh, and do be careful about giving them anything with the words in the title like “Armed”, “Assault”, “Battleship”, “Blastboat”, “Carrier”, “Corvette”, “Cruiser”, “Destroyer”, “Frigate”, “Gunship”, “Patrol”, etc…. Or, at least be careful what you ask for.

Hey thanks for the support guys! Threat/Advantage and Triumph/Despair are one of my favorite things about this system, one of my least like things about dnd was always the lack of story if your GM didn't make a point of it.

I will be certain to check with the group on what kind of ship they want, I think that discussion will come up more over character creation after Long Arm of the Hutt naturally anyway. Thanks for all the advice and such, I'll keep you guys posted!

@rowdyoctopus: Each character starts with 400 creds in the beginner game. Will that be a large amount in future? I guess if I think about it they do start with a net 2000 creds, which I guess is high.

I will also make sure to watch the space battle, but I'm segueing straight into them dealing with the problems on board the Krayt Fang, so if it's a bit anticlimactic that'll be fine. My goal for next session is to teach them to take notes so they remember important plot stuff.

Have you considered looking into Obsidian Portal ? There is a great advantage to being able to maintain and share information in a digital, wiki style format for the group. (Google Docs provides another, less browser sensitive option, as do free forum sites like invisionfree.) If you have people who always have computers open during the game (like my whole table) you may find/encourage these to even be live updated.

Otherwise a notepad/note cards is always useful. Consider handing out cheap white note cards before the game starts.

Ah, so you're planning on having them make new characters? Are these going to be totally new, or just 'real' versions of the starters? Are you going to ret-con them back through the same adventure, (that was never 41-Vex, that was 32-Mex) or start again?

In the main game you get d100 "pocket change" after the starting credits. 400 isn't an insane amount, but it's not insignificant. It also depends on how your party ends up treating their loot-funds. I know parties who divide the treasure at the end of every adventure - than you have our group, that runs with Accounts Payable , Accounts Receivable , and gathers together the board (ie, PCs) to vote on dividend payments .

Here is what I would suggest, as it was how we did it in our group.

Now that the Players had some idea of what the game is like we all made new characters and and began Long Arm of the Hutt as if they had been the ones that had been in the intro adventure. A couple of the players kept the general backgrounds of the pre-gens for continuity but changed up personality and such. The new PCs got the EXP earned from the pre-gens as well.

It worked great.

Good luck!

If you're looking for ships and which book to buy to show your players, download Ogg's character builder and peruse the vehicle's section. The description will give you a book and page number to look up the exact vehicle entry so you know which to buy and which to skip. The YT-2400 and Ghtroc are my two personal favorites of "starting" ships, though the Gozanti is an awesome mid-game ship.

The funny thing about the space combat is, if you are going into Long Arm of the Hutt, is that is is supposed to be an anti-climax.

I had 5 players, 2 Gunners, 1 Pilot, The Mechanic was repairing the hyperdrive motivator and the astrogator calculating the jump. I ran it as a chase and put a timer on it by requiring 6 successes to complete the task of repairing the drive or getting the jump co-ordinates. When the mechanic repaired the drive he then started tweaking the shields. You can also add more fighters if teh players are doing well, no reason why they cant get reinforced.

After having done that the entire group seemed to be OK with space combat, no one has ever sat out, they all are able to find a useful task to do when we are in such a situation.

As such I would be reluctant to miss it.

I'm an experienced GM (lots of systems and genres) with mostly experienced players. I hope my first Edge of the Empire session goes as well as yours.

Yeah I know about obsidian portal and have them signing up, should have mentioned that. One of my buddies DMs a DND group that I've been a part of and he uses Obsidian portal in really cool ways. He has us run a character log of the previous sessions for bonus items or EXP. I'm planning on adopting that, as well as posting News bulletins and other neat things to Obsidian Portal.

Quick question for you ascendant users, is it worth it? Was thinking about upgrading for access to the player forum and other stuff.

As far as my plans go, since we're mostly complete noobs it seemed easier for us to run through LAOTH with the beginner characters still. My plan afterwards is to allow them to either convert those characters to the real system, or make new ones. Since story-wise it makes sense for that group to disband once they've killed the Hutt, I figured anybody who transfers can bring the ship, and any new characters we'll work in as we can. Then they can hock the ship and buy something new, maybe take out a favor or two to get a better one. I thought it would be neat for them to meet their old selves, get a sense of continuity in the universe. Plus I'm not a big fan of reconning, I'd rather tie everything together if I can.

A quick question for you all, would it work better if I converted the characters now so they can spend real EXP? Or will the progression through LAOTH feel alright without doing so? Re-reading LAOTH for prep I guess I worry that there won't be enough character advancement for the story. And since the characters are already pre-mades I don't think it would be that hard for me to go in and re-make them for the base rules. I already have the CRB (Haven't read it yet).

Regardless of the end decision on characters, would it be wise to read the official rules and start using those? For character death and criticals and what not? I already started doing that, basically because I don't like how many restrictions the starter rulebook has for such things.

@Admiral Terghon: Thanks very much! I hope your sessions go well! The system lends itself to table interaction splendidly, so if your players enjoy banter at all they'll love this system.

ould it be wise to read the official rules and start using those? For character death and criticals and what not? I already started doing that, basically because I don't like how many restrictions the starter rulebook has for such things.

It's worth noting, though, that some of the characters are running with "mixed" talent trees. 41-Vex, I happen to recall, has a tree that's 1/2 Doctor, 1/3 Politico, 1/6 Scholar. Each character, I believe, is intended to give a "taste" of each career, rather than a particular specialization. As such, you may find that "real" characters are somewhat more focused. Otherwise, the progression is the same - same talent tree costs, talents are in basically the same levels, skills cost the same. So your not going to get more or less progression by switching over.

If some of these characters are going to wander off into NPC status, you might not have to bother converting them at all. NPC 41-Vex is still running around on our ship (we convinced him to join our crew), and continues to use the starter-box career and talent tree, even through he's at +75xp (1/4 PC)

Going to the full gameplay rules, however, isn't a bad idea, just don't get hung up on it.

My memory told me the beginner game characters only had 100 credits each. I could be wrong. I haven't double checked.

Well according to their little portfolios they each had 400. Who knows. I'm reading the CRB now, so that I can make at least a partial transition to real rules when we play next week. I've decided not to convert the characters yet, since they'd have to make decisions on specializations and stuff, and I'd like to do character creation for a whole session, without interrupting whatever story we're in.

Appreciate the advice, all, will post the escapades of the next session once it happens next week.

The thing I like about the full Obsidian Portal subscription is you can change your stylesheets. Check my signature for how to make your Obsidian Portal look like Edge of the Empire, if you're interested!

That is quite awesome! However, likely far more effort then I want to put forth.

So! We had our second session yesterday. It was partially abbreviated, since our Pilot was absent and they were starting in Space Combat, I waited till my usually late player got there. We played Shadows Over Camelot while we waited. Great game.

Anyway, we played for about two hours and they did combat against some tie fighters in the reaches of space. Since they had already installed the HRMI on the ground, I ruled that they needed to make a successful Astrogation roll in order to make the jump. The technician failed in the first round, So the gunners pummeled the ties, while the ties pummeled back. 41-Vex ran around repairing everything as it fell apart, and I had someone else run Pash, who put the ship through evasive manuevers as well as Gain the Advantage. That first round they took some 13 points of HT damage and 6 points of SS. Second round Mathus succeeded on his Astrogation check with a triumph, so I let them jump if they made it through the round. The gunners, Lowhhrick and Sasha picked off three of the ties, 41-VEX took some strain off the ship, and they made the jump.

A bit lackluster for space combat, I need to read up on it some more, it's a bit too fiddly right now. I don't have a great grasp of it really.

They then went into the first act of LAOTH, with the exploration of the Krayt Fang and fixing it's problems. I told them about the issues on the ship, and as soon as Mathus hears about the smell, he asks if there's a sealable door between the cockpit and the rest of the ship. For a Destiny Point flip, I let him have one. He then calls everyone into the cockpit, seals the door, and opens the boarding ramp in order to vent the ship of atmosphere. In hindsight, considering they were in hyperspace at the time, I probably should have nixed that idea. Oh well. They then try to read all the text. After one botched attempt with the computer, they got it translating, and learned about the Wookie skins and the transponder. Before that the Wookie recognized the Trandoshan word for Wookie in the message, Mathus freaked out, and took the ship back up to regular atmosphere.

They slowly worked through the problems, got a triumph roll on trying to figure out where the transponder was, which I let them use to set it to sending once an hour instead of once every 5 minutes. They also rolled a despair on a computer check for something, which I had no good ideas for at the time. It showed up due to my spending a destiny point, so I think I'll roll it in next session if I remember. Advantage/Threat and Triumph/Despair I still need to work on. I can't just think of things on these checks sometimes.

Anyway, they found B'ura B'an, set him free, and agreed to drop him off at Nabat in exchange for a repaired and refueled ship. They also found the Chitin, but only know that it might have come from Geonosis.

It was a short session, and I wish I'd run space combat a bit more fluidly, I'm still learning how to track things for myself so I remember who's hurt and what actions they can take, which means I forget to have the NPCs to much of anything interesting. I'm sure I'll get there eventually. Really enjoyed the part where they explored their new ship I think, coaxed them into exploring things a bit, since they're new to this. I think I'll start ruling conversations be in Character after LAOTH. That should let them all get used to the system and such.

Feedback appreciated! Excited for the next session.