I have played the game 5-6 times and feel like I have a strong grasp of the rules. I'm making a home brew campaign in an original chunk of space. Looking at all the decks, supplementals, etc. it is hard to know which materials will benefit running my campaign.
If you were starting out today what would be the #1 thing you would get to make your play sessions more effective?
Exclude CRB and Dice.
FFG produced? GM Kit, hands down.
1. OggDude's character creator. It saves so much time and headache for both the players and the GM! This is rule #1 and #2.
3. The NPC decks are really damned handy as well for when the players go completely off the rails.
4. Visuals. I print a different screen crawl to use at the start of every session to remind the players what had just happened and what the characters were doing, as well as to get them into the "Star Wars" mood. I also print off pictures of various NPC's that I plan for them to run into. This is all to help with immersion.
5. A print-out of what can be done with Advantages and Triumphs. While I know that these are only suggestions in the books and not intended to be comprehensive, it helped my group get used to the dice engine a lot when we first started. Now, we don't look at it so much.
6. A sense of humor. Your players will suck sometimes. Your players will be awesome sometimes. Laugh at both and keep the game fast and fun.
Good luck. You're going to need it!
I will list what I use for every session.
1, a Sheet with explanations of every skill.
I use this to explain why a skill works for a check that I call out if a Player has a question about it.
2, a Blank character sheet.
I use this to determine what skill is related to what stat. After a year I still screw that up.
3, a quick reference sheet for combat/vehicle combat info on it.
While I know how combat works if I keep to the sheet it forces me to not screw up the order things are supposed to happen.
4, Squad Rules
I made a reference sheet in excel to have how these work for quick reference.
5, a reference sheet for options on when to add setback dice.
This forces me to add setback dice. If the players have skills to remove the dice, I better be adding them like candy toppings to justify the expenditure.
6, A print out of the conflict penalties.
I use this when people want to know how much their actions affect their morality.
Other than that I keep a blank piece of paper and I have OggDude's character generator handy.
Basically keep the reference tools/papers/etc handy and then I write notes if I want to come back to an idea later.
Your game expectations and house rules.
Your campaign synopsis.
Characters with complete backgrounds and ideas of what they want to do with their characters.
That can all be printed out or any doc file etc.
Most of the people who post here with campaign problems don't write about rule issues, it's either player X or players X, engaging in questionable behavior. If you tell players your boundaries and expectations up front, communicate your campaign theme, and they in turn clear their character concept with you, it seems to me you avoid 90% of the game pitfalls GMs post here.
Edited by 2P51
Players.
I agree with Away that the GM kit is likely the most valuable item produced by FFG after the CRB. For anything past that (ie. supplements), we'd really have to know more about your campaign. Lords of Nal Hutta is wonderful if you in hutt space, but only moderate if your entire campaign takes place in wildspace or the core. Fly Causal won't help a group that that only uses their ship as a plot-powered-people-mover, etc.
-GM kit. If it's a military campaign, or I planned on having the player in charge of a group of minions or starfighters the AoR one specifically.
-Quick references.
-Dry/Wet erase board or mat and tokens. Easy to get and/or make, makes vsual aides on the fly super easier. If using Roll20 or a relative, plenty of digital tokens.
-Digital Tablet (iPad, ect) Great for loading up photos, pictures, ect, so you can just go "It looks like this!" Digital dice are nice too.
-Empty notebook. For taking notes to ensure consistency and make note of critical story points. It's amazing how that one thing the players picked up at random can become a major story point 3 sessions later. Or how that random peasant can turn out to be the spy they'd been hunting all along. It's easier on all if you remember his name.
While all that white board and notebook advice is very strong - I suspect you're looking for more of a "If I was going to buy one book, what would it be?" sort of answer.
In vaguely descending order:
* GM Screen
* Character books (Fly Casual, Far Horizons and so on)
* Sector Books (Corellia or Hutt Space)
* NPC Decks
* Canned Adventures
* Beginner Boxed Set
The Character Sourcebooks, I would get depending on what your players are running (or - make them buy their own!). I'd probably go Hutt Space over Corellia, but that could go either way. Both canned games are very good, with Jewel of Yavin being the more advanced of the two (and a better game, overall). The boxed sets are nice and more dice are always good, but not super useful to the established game.
But the GM screen is absolutely vital. Best, most useful screen I've ever encountered.
Edited by DesslokI have used Far Horizons a lot in setting up the world the players inhabit. Not only is it solid in rounding out the Colonist, it also gives a breakdown of what citizens are likely to earn doing jobs in the galaxy, has rules for establishing a homestead or business that include specific examples of how to stat helpful NPCs, and it gives insight into what careers and specs to use to create various occupations like a lawyer or detective.
Fly Casual would be my second choice, as it rounds out what life on a tramp freighter is like, expands on how to travel in the Star Wars galaxy with a specific discussion of travel times and hyperspace, and has good suggestions for how to incorporate all manner of excitement in a game focused on moving goods from place to place.
If you are struggling to run sessions that are more than interludes of dialogue between furious bouts of combat, I would pick up Jewel of Yavin. It does a wonderful job of rounding out the setting of Cloud City, and has great hooks for intrigue and betrayal peppered throughout. I have "borrowed" liberally from it for as long as it has been out.
NPC decks, hands down.
[edit: a laptop is my #1 essential tool for GMing]
If you have a tablet or laptop around, here's a list of items I've been collecting to help me GM:
Indexes:
http://www.deathstarjanitor.com/swindex/
Dice roller http://game2.ca/eote/
Name/World/Star System/Freight Jobs generator: http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/name/#star_wars
Planet generator:
http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/swsg/
Lots of Form Fillable Sheets: http://bastionkainssweote.blogspot.com/p/character-sheets.html
Tokens:
http://thruxus.shadows-angels.com/1SW/SWTokens/
More Maps: http://www.rpgbooster.com/free-maps-rpg-map-share/
Translator:
http://starwars.myrpg.org/coruscant_translator.php
Hutt Dictionary:
http://www.completewermosguide.com/huttnoncanondictionary.html
This is by no means exhaustive - there's plenty more to be had in the Compiled Resources List in the parent forum to this one.
Edited by themenschWe have created some combat handouts that list out what advantage/threat/triumph/despair results can do, as well as a summary for maneuvers (both personal and vehicle combat).
http://beggingforxp.com/2013/star-wars-combat-sheets/
We also have talent sheets for all the published material.
Adversary decks. I use them constantly.
If you have your own campaign in mind you don't technically require any prefab missions, though I like to use them so your own content stretches further.
Scope out your episode outline and tack on some images on the end. Wookiepedia and the web in general is a hotbed of Star Wars related visuals. If you have access to an iPad or other tablet use it to run your outline and then just flip back to the images when you want to give your players a cool visualization (armored opponents never gets old and starship images help a lot).
As far as books to acquire you really just need the core rule book and the GM screen. I have all the FFG books (EotE, AoR, and F&D) plus almost the entire West End Games 2nd Edition collection to draw from but you really don't need all of that stuff. Just a firm imagination, the core book, and these forums will take you far.
Suggestions for PDFs to pick up on Drivethrurpg include the Traveler line of 21 Plot books (invaluable resources for generating episode ideas). Also anything issued for the Firefly RPG makes great source material for constructing a Star Wars episode.
The number one thing I'd suggest getting before starting is a character background from each player. They don't have to go too focused if that's not their strength; however, having something to weave specific plot points just for them into episodes enriches and game and excites them for more. Ask them to work their starting Obligation into their backgrounds so its not just some stat to tick off for each episode.
Depending on your creativity level write an outline of an overarching plot. Mine is 350 pages but I'm like a gerbil on steroids when I get in the creative mode; yours could be a nice simple two pages. Just construct a basic outline of something to move your "overarching" plot forward in each episode. So in episode V our heroes may take on a job carrying some passengers from Corellia to Coruscant. Perhaps one of them is a member of the crime syndicate your heroes owe Obligation to who is carrying certain compromising documents that a rival syndicate is after to compromise their enemy's operation, etc, etc, etc.
Mine is 350 pages but I'm like a gerbil on steroids when I get in the creative mode;
Mine is 350 pages but I'm like a gerbil on steroids when I get in the creative mode;
For the sake of fairness, that includes images and I fill in a lot of detail so it's a bit bulky for an outline. I end up adjusting it after every game session as the players do things that open new doors or close ones that were planned. It's like a monster that grows the more my players and my imagination feeds it.
a bottle of Evan Williams
FFG produced? GM Kit, hands down.
NPC decks, hands down.
I challenge thee to fisticuffs!
Mine is 350 pages but I'm like a gerbil on steroids when I get in the creative mode;
And here I thought my 80Mb GM Holocron was something.
I find the adversary decks to be an inestimable aid for randomizing encounters
Is there anything comparable to OggDude's character creator for MacBook users? My PC will never travel to a game, but my MacBook, iPad and iPhone all will. Personally, I'd rather have the iPad for visuals, my iPhone for dice (until I can get enough) and my MacBook for everything I need to know. If there is not a similar program, does the OggDude one export to PDF well? I haven't installed it because my PC is collecting dust as my wife is playing Xbox on the monitor and I've been mostly using my other devices, but I can if that is really the only way to do it and can be useful with enough preparation.
Is there anything comparable to OggDude's character creator for MacBook users?
No, at least not yet. I’ve taken to running a VM on Amazon AWS and I shut it down when I don’t need it, so that I don’t pay for it being up and running 24x7.
“SParker” has the SWSheets.com website that he is working on, but it’s still early days yet.
If there is not a similar program, does the OggDude one export to PDF well?
Using something like CutePDF , you can print to a PDF document. There are plenty of other solutions in this space, if you don’t like CutePDF.
Probably said in some other form but worth repeating, encounters.
Adventures at the of core books, examples of play, GM chapter play suggestions, modular and local encounters in setting books (Suns of Fortune, Lords of Nal Hutta), encounter suggestions in career books...
All this have three important elements-
a. Suggestions for challenges. Coming up with interesting or engaging concepts of challenge is difficult, this will give you a general idea of a broken down encounter into concept, checks, story, and supplemental elements like environment.
b. Checks and difficulty. Most encounters and examples of play have suggestions for checks for common actions and difficulty examples, that will help you set your own difficulty and you may use this examples as templates for your own challenges.
c. General story ideas. Especially in setting books, modular and local encounters can be used organically, for example when the party in the city, draw the activities that fit, re-skin for the proper flavor and use the NPCs as templates for your own named characters.