Hi

I didn't find any concrete infos about how does buying / searching stuff on a Black Market (Or not) works.

Example 1: My Team is at a Black Market at the Outer Rim. They ask the guy what he can offer them. How do you response to that question Do you offer them random stuff? What is the rarity limit? Cause if i offer them a "VX Sidewinder" they will instantly buy it

Example 2: My Team is looking for a specific item. How does the process work? Knowledge Check where to find it? But that does not guaranteer them they can find it there? Ask people and more people till they find a salesman?

I Hope you can help me to figure it out and maybe tell me how you handle it

- Dutzen -

Check out page page 150 of your Edge of the Empire core rulebook. The rules were written with the assumption you know what you want to get, rather than finding the black market and asking "what do you got?"

It's a streetwise check with a difficulty based on the rarity of the item and the availability of such goods on the particular planet you are on. extra Successes could get you a small discount and threat or despair could have the deal go sour in some way.

It all depends where your characters are... Small farmer settlement on a Outer Rim border world, then I would just say they can only find items with rarity of 4 or less ; Huge spaceport of one of the main Hyperspace lanes in the core worlds, i'd say they can find items up to rarity 7 or 8, nothing restricted ®. This way you can skip a lot of book keeping and dice rolls. Your players can pick up the book, say they buy this and that and move on....

If they want something not in the place rarity range, then they need to do a Streetwise/Negociate check following the rules on EotE CRB page 149 to 151 (Like Kaosoe said). "The owner of that small arms shop might have that uber weapon you're looking for in the backstore, but will he sell it to you ? Maybe you're an imperial agent trying to make a quick bust."

Hope it helps.

Thanks

Like a lot of skill checks in this system, you can either make one dice roll and narrate the results, or make it as detailed as you like.

If it's not an important part of the game, you can just make a Negotiation check, and narrate the results as the PCs involved search for contacts to sell some goods, find a buyer/seller and haggle with them, and ultimately either end up with a successful transaction or not.

If you want to give it more detail, you can describe the environments and let the PCs roleplay going from one shop to another, interacting with various dealers, and end up with a result that way.

Unless you've prepared the merchant's inventory beforehand, it's much easier for the PCs to say what they're looking for and then have them roll the required Negotiation or Streetwise checks.

Basic rules, if they want to find it, they roll streetwise with a difficulty determined by rarity.

Feel free to upgrade difficulty if they are looking for Restricted gear, especially if there's lots of law enforcement around.

Now, I made the mistake once of letting players do the rolls themselves, and buy gear between games. I wasn't worried about dishonesty, but I misjudged one player's understanding of the system. He asked another player, the Scoundrel, to make the Streetwise and Negotiations rolls for him. Fair enough, but then I guess I should have done that in-game. He also either didn't understand or simply ignored the skill checks for mods. (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt) So, he spent all his credits and some of the group's (with the other players' permission) and really overpowered his character.

So, my first mistake was not running the purchase in-game. Even if it's a summary of a single dice roll, I should have been part of the process, particularly because there might be threat/despair involved. Which reminds me, there's a great entry in the Skill Monkey podcast about buying gear.

http://www.madadventurers.com/category/field-recordings/skill-monkey/page/2/ Scroll down to the title "Buying a Droid."

I also failed to separate player knowledge and character knowledge, which led to the player shopping around the galaxy like it was a single mega-mall. I really didn't require any explanation or have any say in how the character even knows such a thing exists. So, going forward, there are a few items I think the players really wouldn't know about. Plus, if it's gear that's better suited to another player's role in the group, I point out that it makes more sense for that character to have it. Plus, some things just don't make sense to a character. In general, I think that if it's from a Career book, the player of that career should have dibs on it, but it can be available if it helps the team make up for skill shortfalls.

Basic rules, if they want to find it, they roll streetwise with a difficulty determined by rarity.

Feel free to upgrade difficulty if they are looking for Restricted gear, especially if there's lots of law enforcement around.

If it's unrestricted it's Negotiation, not Streetwise. Streetwise is for black market items. That said, while items marked R will be restricted pretty much everywhere, all the other items will vary from planet to planet and situation to situation.

For example I suspect that on Coruscant you could buy a blaster pistol on the open or black market, with different difficulties and results from each. Legal is probably harder, but without any red dice, illegally is probably a smidge easier, but the chance of despair will be something you'll need to worry about.