Make sure to apply 1 or 2 setbacks for searching in a hurry, and another 1 or 2 setbacks for splitting up and not concentrating your efforts in any given area.

One of the reasons I enjoy RP is that it gets me AWAY from a computer. And I am not good at talking to people I have never met, certain social/mental issues.

Totally understand, and I am sorry to hear that.

But, the other side of the coin is you are playing with people that are stressing you out, or it seems like that from your posts.

For an "away from the computer" idea, maybe go to your local game shop. Most have some sort of table or bench or something to play.

For the "talking to new people" I totally get that too. I am sometimes the same way, though not always. The advantage of gaming over the internet is that it doesn't feel quite as scary to meet new people (at least to me). You can control what people see or hear, and if you don't get along you never have to see them again.

It sucks to be in a position where you want to game, but you hang out with a group that doesn't game like you would prefer. I run into that with board games and multi-player console games. I want to play with my friends that are in the same room but they aren't as excited about the games I have as I am.

I am sorry if my idea about the online group doesn't work for you.

Basically it sounds like I need to put the squeeze on them.

Harder to sell stolen goods. So hard that it might not be worth the bother.

Make it a point they are carrying stolen or illegal goods.

Have people push them... Jabba may well be pissed, they didnt uncover Teemos spying on him, so all he knows is they killed him.

One other tactic is to go the other way, and just be bland and matter-of-fact about the looting. Make them look up the encumbrance for every item they pick up, and calculate their new limit and keep track of how many maneuvers they've lost or setback they've gained (I can't remember the mechanic for encumbrance at the moment). If they complain it's tedious, be clear it's not your problem, it's entirely up to them how tedious they want to make it.

Actually...you could drive the point home with an old fashioned dungeon crawl...some secret underground Imperial complex connected to a series of caves wherein lurk packs of rabid carnivores...not too dangerous at first, but once the main adventure is over and they're staggering back to their ship under the weight of all that loot through several kilometres of tunnels, let the howling begin! Only the unencumbered are going to make it, the rest will drown in a sea of slashing fangs weighed down by their own greed...

@fatedtodie

Its not that I dont like it, its that my mental blocks get in the way. Its a good idea, one day I might try it.

@whafrog

I am no good at creating adventures at all, I simply cannot form any kind of substance in a story, so I am limited currently to prewritten stuff, fan made, official, WEG whatever.

Honestly at 2k credits apiece and 6k credits among the group, you aren't really flush with credits in the group, those amounts are pretty easy to go thru.

Used ship with a Navcomputer all in Trandoshan, they may want to invest in a new navcomputer with more than 4 planets updated, and invest a few credits in buying the rest of the parts they need to finish assembling an astromech droid to assist with maintining their ship, find things that might appeal to them, and having a droid around to offer assists or guard the ship while they are all out shooting up the cantina and catching obscure alien STDs(hey maybe they need to buy a medical droid now, okay lets maybe no go there) They may want to give the ship a new paint job and pay an infochant and slicer to make them a new transponder code and forge new ownership documents for the vessel to file thru BoSS

Make sure to apply 1 or 2 setbacks for searching in a hurry, and another 1 or 2 setbacks for splitting up and not concentrating your efforts in any given area.

SHAKES FIST* **** YOU KAOSOEI

More good advice that I didn't think of first!

@rebeldave, I have no idea what the area is like where you are at, but I did do a quick Google search and found this. I have had pretty good luck with Meetup.com. I found my last group in Germany from there, and I also found all the players in my new group here in Virginia that way.

http://www.meetup.com/Star-Citizen-UK-Meetup/events/209247602/

Jabba may be forgiving of them killing Teemo, based on evidence they have he was plotting against him but a debts a debt and business is business after all.

Not to mention, Hutts don't want anybody else killing Hutts without explicit sanction...it ruins their god-emperor image.

There's a plot hook. Word gets out that someone greased a Hutt and lived to tell about it, and the Hutt's client races start rebelling.

And the Hutts blame the PCs.

Hello!

Are all PCs' motivations wealth related?

If not, maybe you could begin by taking this into account when doleying out XPs... by being insane murderhobos they're acting against their own goals!

HtH

L

Okay, three pages on I suspect I'll be just repeating information - but what the hell. . . .

I brought this up with one of my players and he flat out said "If you try to keep us poor, we will simply try harder to loot more" (One player, who is currently absent, makes it a point to steal EVERY SINGLE WEAPON of EVERY SINGLE ENEMY they kill)

Oh sure you could do the Heavy Hand of the GM, removing money and goods and ships and equipment at the drop of the hat. However the bigger issue here is: game expectations. You need to sit down with everyone and come up with what EVERYONE - GM and Players - wants out of the game. Do they want to be high rollers while you keep them in abject poverty? That's not going to work, horses pulling the cart in two directions.

You need to sort out the tone of the game - big money bigshots vs Cowboy Bebop "forced to eat mushrooms that cause everyone to trip out because there's no food left on the ship at all" - before anything else.

And the key word here is "Compromise". All people at the table are there for fun: gm and players. You might have to strike a balance between your penny pinching and their grab everything under the sun ways. Tell them as long as they don't rip up the floorboards and pry the gold fillings out of the teeth of the dead, you'll make sure to give them cool swag occasionally. Thus, everyone is happy (and it makes the cool swag feel more important).

What Desslok said.

If my GM tried telling me I have to pay 2000 Creds for fuel and food while the group barely has 10k, I'd sure as hell loot every bit of scrapmetal I can get, because I'd be barely able to afford living.

Not only are you not listening to what your players want to play, you are forcing their characters to loot, steal or even beg for money.

They obviously don't want to play beggars, so give them money and they'll stop looting.

They don't WANT to loot, they feel the need to do so.

They don't enjoy your low budget style of play, so if you force them into it, they eventually won't enjoy your game AT ALL.

If my GM tried telling me I have to pay 2000 Creds for fuel and food while the group barely has 10k, I'd sure as hell loot every bit of scrapmetal I can get, because I'd be barely able to afford living.

Not to derail the thread, but honestly, that was almost exactly my starting campaign hook. "You own an import/export business, but since the Empire arrived, pickings have been slim. You're almost broke, and to make matters worse, you're going to owe 2000 credits on your ship lease at the end of the month." Then I presented a potentially lucrative job, with "complications" and the glimmers of a Byzantine plot...so far so good...

My EOTE characters regularly had to pay 2000 or so credits for refueling/maintenance/docking fees, and I don't think they ever managed to have as much 10k credits at one time in the entire campaign!

I am no good at creating adventures at all, I simply cannot form any kind of substance in a story, so I am limited currently to prewritten stuff, fan made, official, WEG whatever.

You don't have to talk about it if you don't want, but I'm curious why you have this opinion of yourself. The process of creating an adventure is different for everyone, and maybe you just haven't found the process yet that works for you. I often like to start with characters and motives; but sometimes I'll start with the geography, what makes a place different, and who wants to leverage that difference into a power play. Because ultimately the game revolves around power play and motive, who's hindering or helping who, and what they all want out of a situation. In the end, it really is that simple.

One fantastic aid is the "21 Plots" series available as downloadable PDFs, there's quite a few of them and most are great:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/91708/21-Plots

They are for the Traveller game, but it takes almost no tweaking to work with the gist of the ideas.

@whafrog

Yeah, our campaign started like that, too, but after our first bounty, we stole one of Bandin Dobahs freighters and managed to sell it, so even if we didn't get the bounty, we had about 50k after that.

We had to pay for a new hyperdrive and the damage we caused to some crimelords ship, but we had a lot of money to get some basic gear.

Oh, and we had a cargo bay full of glitterstim..

Well, normally we're not rich, but when we desperatly need money our GM gives us money.

After we permanently parked my YT-1300 (hated that ship. Too cliché) on Naboo he practically handed us a Lambda shuttle in prime condition we could sell to the crimelord we had a run in with earlier for a top price of 150k, which we spent on a VERY ugly pink partyship with a bar and everything inside (pink because we rolled a despair in our negotiation check with the shiptrader).

Sorry for further derailing, but maybe there is something the OP can learn from this.

The is definitely nothing wrong with keeping the players starving for credits, there is additionally nothing wrong with letting them get flush with credits on occasion the key is to do both with moderation, and as I said before look at what your characters want the credits for.

If one of your players really wants to save up enough credits for a better attachment or blaster or armor or a droid for example and it wont derail the campaign by all means loosen up a little on the tight credits when its deserving and let them feel like they can earn and achieve some. If all 6 players want to save up for Heavy Powered Armor and Heavy Repeating Blasters, maybe you should keep them poor awhile to avoid it turning into a monty haul combat monster campaign. Find that middle ground where the players can make purchases for the sake of improvement for their characters and to do things to advance your storyline, and anything in excess of that it yours to use as a plot element for incentive or an expense that drives your storyline.

I am no good at creating adventures at all, I simply cannot form any kind of substance in a story, so I am limited currently to prewritten stuff, fan made, official, WEG whatever.

Naw, anyone can come up with a good game idea. Just do what I do: shamelessly steal!

* How about some heist game ideas?

* Put your players in a Mercenary Fighter Combat game?

* Spaghetti Western, anyone?

* Perhaps war movies are more your speed?

A little creativity and some elbow grease in filing the serial numbers off and suddenly your Seven Samurai is now Battle Beyond the Stars.

If my GM tried telling me I have to pay 2000 Creds for fuel and food while the group barely has 10k, I'd sure as hell loot every bit of scrapmetal I can get, because I'd be barely able to afford living.

Really? IRL, I know many people that often have less than 10k in the bank and monthly bills in excess of 2k looming. None of the people I know are looting everything they see, even things that are legal to pick up (soda cans along the side of the road), and none of them make a habit of pawning everything that comes into their hands.

But you know who does tend to get to that point? Hardcore drug addicts. Is that the kind of characters people want to play?

@HappyDaze

And how many of those people you know make a habbit of getting into gunfights with crimelords? Or travel all over the earth without an income from a regular job or welfare?

How many of them are characters in a roleplaying game?

Because I seriously don't see the connection between ordinary people in the real world like you and me and characters in a P&P game.

Once again, the movies have all the answers:

Because I seriously don't see the connection between ordinary people in the real world like you and me and characters in a P&P game.

And that lack of connection is probably why these problems come up so often in some games. Perhaps trying to emphasize some of the aspects that make it feel more real will help prevent what is often seen as abusive behavior.

I got wealth obsessed players, but it's not a problem as long as I give them meaningful cashsinks that don't look like them.

I let them have a Star Destroyer ... at least what was left of it ... and now they have to spend 30 million credits to fix it (actually much less, when you convert wealth into obligation, etc.), they have to take care of the repair team, arm their crew in case the shipyard gets attacked, pay bribes to officials/Hutts/Black Sun/etc. to keep what's theirs, etc. They are very excited to reroute all their acquired wealth into repairs, because they know they'll get their ship eventually if they work hard enough. But that's because they wanted to be their own little Zann Consortium.

Help the group find a project, and tell them to put money into it. Have them get symbolic rewards (allies, respect, people going "wow!" around their project, etc.) and they'll want to sink all that more extra wealth into it. Bingo!

Star Wars characters in the movies or comics sometimes had access to tremendous ressources, but that didn't mean stories were impossible to write. Heck, the whole Clone Wars series was full of lightsaber-wielding, armed to the teeth Clone commanders, humongous fleets, tanks, super-weapons, etc. and yet it was possible to make a suitable story.

Because I seriously don't see the connection between ordinary people in the real world like you and me and characters in a P&P game.

And that lack of connection is probably why these problems come up so often in some games. Perhaps trying to emphasize some of the aspects that make it feel more real will help prevent what is often seen as abusive behavior.

I disagree.

I believe it's a missing connection between the players and the GM, not a missing connection between the game and reality.

Because I seriously don't see the connection between ordinary people in the real world like you and me and characters in a P&P game.

And that lack of connection is probably why these problems come up so often in some games. Perhaps trying to emphasize some of the aspects that make it feel more real will help prevent what is often seen as abusive behavior.

I disagree.

I believe it's a missing connection between the players and the GM, not a missing connection between the game and reality.

Anything that diminishes the connection between realism and the game is a negative for some people. Such behaviour diminishes realism. And it seems that the GM cares about realism and the players are treating it like a video game. If you want to say that the problem is this difference in taste between the GM and players then that may well be true on one level, but what HappyDaze is saying and which I agree with, is that specifically it is this lack of connection between reality / realism and the players actions that is the issue. And being specific helps us examine things.

I don't think that the players treat the game as a video game, because OP said that his players will keep looting people and stuff IF the GM continues to try and keep them poor.

So I think they might only have different ideas about the available money in their campaign and that looting is just a symptom. So if I'm right, giving the players more money (which I'd recommend )will stop the looting, just because they won't need to anymore.