I've taken to cannibalizing portions of the FFG content for use in my sessions. I'm going to run Sabaac Game on the Row and Corellian Shuffle on Saturday or at least as much as I get done in one session. I have some stuff in the middle for them as well.

I'm replacing Carn's role with Catrinna. She's the recurring character I want and I don't need her to act as arm candy to hand off to Carn, who is superfulous.

Has anyone played either of these modules? Do you have any tips? I'd love to hear your stories.

My players enjoyed the Sabacc game, although I think the rules for playing sabacc are a little broken, particularly in regards to the force die. I'd adjust it so that the black/white pips just cancel the positive/negative results, instead of converting them. Also, the way bets are managed is not well-constructed; you can make several times your ante, but it seems you can't lose more than you put in.

The roleplaying part, however, was great. It was especially fun for the two Twi'leks in the group, who are used to secret side conversations via Lekku, because they risked exposing themselves to the NPC Twi'lek. Also, RPing Catrinna can be a lot of fun and mischief. Tweak the mechanics a bit and you are in for a treat.

You might consider switching to the rules for Hintaro in the Fly Casual book.

Also, I'd highly recommend the "Long Arm of the Law" encounter. My group loved it, as they scrambled to hide things and outwit the customs officers. Definitely one of the better moments of our campaign.

So the session was a success and the mechanics for both Sabaac and the Corellian Shuffle were a lot of fun. The latter was the PC favourite.

The following is a paraphrase of what I posted in another Sabaac thread.

The only issue we had was with cheating actually making the check more difficult. Both NPC and PC groups had an experienced cheater among their ranks, but most of the time the PC would elect to use the poorer dice pool because it wouldn't upgrade a purple to red.

I kept the opponent's rolls hidden. I got a piece of paper and listed the NPC players at the table, keeping track of their results each round and responding accordingly when they busted they'd back out of the game.

The pacing was great. The PCs were in possession of two stolen Imperial speeder bikes. They wanted to get rid of them as fast as they could. They negotiated the sale of these bikes with Catrinna over a sabaac table. After each hand of sabaac there would be some conversation, only a minute or two, where they'd slowly pick away at information about each other, about their goals, the business at hand, and eventually when the PCs were indebted to her, they discussed a job!

The inclusion of the force die was awesome. Roll your dice pool, resolve the pool aka cancel things out, then roll the force die and apply the changes. The reason you do it in this order is so if you had equal successes and failures, they'd cancel and when you roll the force die, it applies to what remains.

What was missing from Sabaac was the tension of trying to decide to fold or let it ride, whether you’re going to bluff the opponent or be fluffed and lose your shirt. Fly Casual features a holo cube game that includes a period of upping the bet. Next time I play Sabaac I will include that, essentially making a hand of Sabaac 2 die rolls.

1. Ante.

2. Roll (first cards are dealt)

3. Banter.

4. Bet.

5. Roll (last cards are dealt)

6. Resolve and Banter.

Rinse and repeat.

I was a bit nervous about how the Corellian Shuffle would play out – I didn’t know if my players would respond well to the experience and whether or not it would feel clunky and awkward with keeping track of rounds.

Gosh was I wrong! My players soaked it in like flowers do sunshine. One PC decided to keep track of the rounds. They made specific plans about who was going to stand where, who was going to fly, astrogate, etc.

The Jedi exile sensed the Duros’ deception, so the shuffle didn’t end before it started. They realized before they began that their pilot should not leave the cockpit – focus on Astrogating and during those rounds the others would do the lifting.

When confronted by pirates, they focused on running rather than fighting.

I used x-wing miniatures and some other spaceship models I have laying around to represent the experience. The highlight for us was when the Twilek scoundrel had to dock the ship because their Chiss pilot was focused on astrogating. She botched the docking twice, scraping the ships together. The owner of the ship, whom they had stuffed in a storage locker, was very worried about all that noise!

They completed the shuffle in 19 rounds!

This seems interesting. I'll have to get this when my finances let me.