This will come a bit harsh, but I want to start a discussion, so I have to be a bit confrontional.

Disclaimer: I am deeply in love with the FFG SW ruleset and consider it a great Star Wars RPG. But this is not about the RPG itself.
So, I play more of a star-wars-epic-adventure campaign and less an EoE campaign. But now an adventure would fit where the players have to get a job to earn some money so they can go on. Great opportunity to save some time and use a published adventure I figured.
So I delved into the adventure modules, bought one new, read the one provided with other books and lend me some from fellow gamers. But man... they are so boring.
I really understand the notion to make Star Wars with more of a Firefly/ Shadowrun spin, but man, FFG should really consider reading some of the published adventures from similar settings.

As far as I am concerned, when I buy a high prized adventure module, I am expecting an outstanding scenario, something cool, moving and fresh. “Beyond the Rim” for example is a beast of an adventure, but it is so mediocre that I´m stunned.

No notable cool villain, no real twists and turns, no backstabbing, no “nothing is at it seems” situations, no deeper dramatic meaning, no moral choices. No cool underground adventure stuff. Only setpieces after setpieces, shoot- outs after chases and some action. And I´ve read about 6 of them so far. Of course with some effort your self- made adventures are mostly always better, because you can tailor it to your needs, but man, a published adventure should be something more than that. It seems very lazy.
Take “Beyond the Rim”, such a cool premise, such a lame execution.

(SPOILER)

Players getting a job – shoot out with some bad guys. Flying to the planet, fighting a few times against wild beasts, battling the bad guys again, finding survivors, argue with survivors, Empire comes, they flee. Go to the great scrapyard, fighting the bad guy AGAIN (who are masquerating as JAWAS... really???), Empire comes AGAIN, they flee.

(SPOILER END)

The Empire guy is a not noteworthy Officier, the bad guys are more bland goons, the “treasure” does not really feels like something really noteworthy. In a nutshell, they go from A to B to C without real surprises and without something of an unexpected turn of event. And the stakes aren´t really high because the “treasure” is something that is not highlighted very much. And this is only an example for the general structure of the modules.

Someone remembering i.e. “Maria Mercurial” from Shadowrun, an adventure about

(SPOILER)

protecting a schizophrenic rockstar with three personalities, whose mood swings suddenly without apparent reason for the players, with a traitor and a cool villain who is so friendly evolved with his best friend (a Dragon) that the players will actually feel bad killing him? (

SPOILER END)

Or the firefly adventure about

(SPOILER)

a somewhat sympathic fugitive who wants to be transported but suddenly take the ship of the player´s, taking them hostage and starts a run on the Alliance facilities to steal his old ship? Or the one with the wrestling ship where they put slaves against another

(SPOILER).

Have you made similar experiences. Or am I overacting?
Keep on gaming,

Dennis

I like adventures with some twists, turns and mysteries - which is why I write them myself. They contain everything I like to have in an adventure, every time. Isn't that great?

I like adventures with some twists, turns and mysteries - which is why I write them myself. They contain everything I like to have in an adventure, every time. Isn't that great?

Yeah, I stumbled on this phenomenon a while ago, too. But that was not what I was aiming at.

While one could run a published adventure by the book, I think the true benefit is that one can pick them apart and forge them into something new. Thus far we've had a lot of fun at our table playing published adventures for EotE and AoR, although we do just as I've said and made them our own.

While one could run a published adventure by the book, I think the true benefit is that one can pick them apart and forge them into something new. Thus far we've had a lot of fun at our table playing published adventures for EotE and AoR, although we do just as I've said and made them our own.

Yeah, of course that is always an option. You can get a general spark at least. I will take the premise of "Beyond the RiM" I think. But there´s a difference between "playing by the book", "tailor it to your needs" or "take some ideas". When you have to take option 3, this supplement is a bad investment, I think.

A self-made adventure is almost always superior in every way, there is not much controversion here, I think. But there is one redeeming quality of published modules: They can save a lot of time. A tweek here, a better motivation there, some adjustements and your done. Because I am on a point, where it resolves about players getting one job before I start moving back to the epic adventure stuff, I thought I could save hours of work. But I personally am disappointed about the modules.

My general question was more aimed on your opinions if you think I´m right about the quality and what your expereinces with the SWFFG modules are... and just to have a fun discussion about the adventures.

While one could run a published adventure by the book, I think the true benefit is that one can pick them apart and forge them into something new. Thus far we've had a lot of fun at our table playing published adventures for EotE and AoR, although we do just as I've said and made them our own.

Yeah, of course that is always an option. You can get a general spark at least. I will take the premise of "Beyond the RiM" I think. But there´s a difference between "playing by the book", "tailor it to your needs" or "take some ideas". When you have to take option 3, this supplement is a bad investment, I think.

A self-made adventure is almost always superior in every way, there is not much controversion here, I think. But there is one redeeming quality of published modules: They can save a lot of time. A tweek here, a better motivation there, some adjustements and your done. Because I am on a point, where it resolves about players getting one job before I start moving back to the epic adventure stuff, I thought I could save hours of work. But I personally am disappointed about the modules.

My general question was more aimed on your opinions if you think I´m right about the quality and what your expereinces with the SWFFG modules are... and just to have a fun discussion about the adventures.

Well, I think we're just of different minds on this. For me they're not a bad investment because I mine them heavily for NPCs and set pieces that will be reused for years. I think the production quality is fantastic and I find the stories interesting enough without being overly complicated. I disassemble adventures for good content all the time, been doing that for a long, long time. It rarely even occurs to me to run a published adventure cover-to-cover - but that's my style, and I know it's not for everyone.

I have to imagine it's hard for the writers to make something that works for everyone....

While one could run a published adventure by the book, I think the true benefit is that one can pick them apart and forge them into something new. Thus far we've had a lot of fun at our table playing published adventures for EotE and AoR, although we do just as I've said and made them our own.

This ^ I never run modules as written. They are simply resources and suggestions. I've run BtR twice with two different groups and it's been a lot of fun, but each one was completely different. Both times I created my own additional elements with some of these features:

No notable cool villain, no real twists and turns, no backstabbing, no “nothing is at it seems” situations, no deeper dramatic meaning, no moral choices.

In some ways it's a lot more work adapting a comprehensive module that already includes those elements because they're automatically constraining, the threads within the story are bound too tightly, and harder to untangle to fit my own campaign.

While one could run a published adventure by the book, I think the true benefit is that one can pick them apart and forge them into something new. Thus far we've had a lot of fun at our table playing published adventures for EotE and AoR, although we do just as I've said and made them our own.

This ^ I never run modules as written. They are simply resources and suggestions. I've run BtR twice with two different groups and it's been a lot of fun, but each one was completely different. Both times I created my own additional elements with some of these features:

No notable cool villain, no real twists and turns, no backstabbing, no “nothing is at it seems” situations, no deeper dramatic meaning, no moral choices.

In some ways it's a lot more work adapting a comprehensive module that already includes those elements because they're automatically constraining, the threads within the story are bound too tightly, and harder to untangle to fit my own campaign.

An example for a great open-minded adventure supplement was the SIFRP "Wedding Knight", which does more of a set-up and expecting you to tailor and fill in the blanks. The SW modules did not seem to be structured this way in my opinion.

It´s great to be a good scrapper, maybe I should learn to do that more, because I have more the overall notion to set a bad adventure aside and start entirely from scratch.

I mean, in my opinion the hardest thing isn´t to imagine the setpieces (it´s a bit "dusty" to build the stats of many NPCs, so I am greatful for them), the hardest thing is a complex and surprising story. And I think the adventures does not give ideas for that in the slightest. Of course you never play them as written (that´s hardly possible if you are giving your players enough room to move), but I think you should at least expect something better than that.

But what is your overall opinion of the adventures? They may be good scrappiles, but are you content with more than their moving parts? Worth the money?

While one could run a published adventure by the book, I think the true benefit is that one can pick them apart and forge them into something new. Thus far we've had a lot of fun at our table playing published adventures for EotE and AoR, although we do just as I've said and made them our own.

This ^ I never run modules as written. They are simply resources and suggestions. I've run BtR twice with two different groups and it's been a lot of fun, but each one was completely different. Both times I created my own additional elements with some of these features:

No notable cool villain, no real twists and turns, no backstabbing, no “nothing is at it seems” situations, no deeper dramatic meaning, no moral choices.

In some ways it's a lot more work adapting a comprehensive module that already includes those elements because they're automatically constraining, the threads within the story are bound too tightly, and harder to untangle to fit my own campaign.

An example for a great open-minded adventure supplement was the SIFRP "Wedding Knight", which does more of a set-up and expecting you to tailor and fill in the blanks. The SW modules did not seem to be structured this way in my opinion.

It´s great to be a good scrapper, maybe I should learn to do that more, because I have more the overall notion to set a bad adventure aside and start entirely from scratch.

I mean, in my opinion the hardest thing isn´t to imagine the setpieces (it´s a bit "dusty" to build the stats of many NPCs, so I am greatful for them), the hardest thing is a complex and surprising story. And I think the adventures does not give ideas for that in the slightest. Of course you never play them as written (that´s hardly possible if you are giving your players enough room to move), but I think you should at least expect something better than that.

But what is your overall opinion of the adventures? They may be good scrappiles, but are you content with more than their moving parts? Worth the money?

On more thing: I did not run, but read many published adventures.

And there were really great stuff between them.

I.e. "Mercurial" for Shadowrun, so was "DNA/DOA" and "Harlekin", "Peril at King´s Landing" from SIFRP, nearly all KULT adventures were so great, the German D&D Black Eye, which I loathe, had one redeeming quality: Despite publishing a flood of adventures, they were fairly great adventures. The Dragon Age Stuff had really great adventures with stunning moral choices.

When I want to salvage, I prefer sourcebooks, which are fairly good on the SWFFG (the Corellia sourcebook i.e.). Blocks of stats and seeds would suffice for that.

I would like to salvage parts of a great story, and tailor the surroundings and circumstances, not the other way around.

For me, it´s really a shame that in this really great new RPG I did not find one adventure that was more than mediocre.

How did you like "Beyond the Rim" by the way.

Eh, I kind of liked the canned games. Okay the one in the Core Rules was weak - but it's just the "Here's how the game is suppose to work" tutorial. It doesn't have the page count to get into any sort of depth. Same with the Beta adventure - just more of a taste to whet your beak than anything.

I'm not including the Beginner sets because they're designed to be the tutorial level. The follow up game for the EotE one was pretty cool tho. Took a smidge of re-writing in the middle to clean up some kludgy parts, but otherwise was a good game. The AoR Beginner Set was fun too - but we were well advanced by that point and in an entirely different setting, so I pretty much just used the encounters in a rough order as part of a much bigger game.

Beyond the Rim - wasn't bad. I liked the settings, and sometimes you don't need an intricate plot to support a fun game. Jewel of Yavin, however was much better - planning the heist, figuring out how to fix the race, throwing the last half of the module out because the players didn't do anything as expected. It worked out well - highly recommended.

Yes any canned game is going to be written vaguely generically - FFG has to accommodate all play styles from Run-N-Gun to master planners and schemers. That's just the nature of RPG publishing - all the way back to the early WEG days, modules had to cater to the lowest common denominators. Also any GM worth their salt should take all canned games and tailor them to their group. Running them straight from the book as written would probably be a frustrating exercise. Good for the beginner GM, but not so much for the experienced one.

TL;DNR - Canned games run the gauntlet from poor to awesome, like any other game book ever printed, but they have their place (sometimes heavily reworked).

I played BtR n liked it. Under a Black Sun was fun also. I don't run canned games other than the modular encounters. I just feel like I'm studying when I get a canned game, having to teach myself the names and places and read the material over and over so I'm not stumped at game time. Good, bad, or otherwise when I write my own I know the story and characters, prep is easier imo.

Worth the money?

To me they have been, all of them, but that's entirely subjective. But then I'm lucky enough to have enough money to buy all the resources produced for this game. I haven't been disappointed yet.

It´s great to be a good scrapper, maybe I should learn to do that more, because I have more the overall notion to set a bad adventure aside and start entirely from scratch.

I mean, in my opinion the hardest thing isn´t to imagine the setpieces (it´s a bit "dusty" to build the stats of many NPCs, so I am greatful for them), the hardest thing is a complex and surprising story. And I think the adventures does not give ideas for that in the slightest. Of course you never play them as written (that´s hardly possible if you are giving your players enough room to move), but I think you should at least expect something better than that.

But what is your overall opinion of the adventures? They may be good scrappiles, but are you content with more than their moving parts? Worth the money?

I think it's a good skill to acquire to be able to be scrappy as you say it - it's been my experience that no plan survives contact with the players, so it has seemed fruitless to plan in too much detail the interactions they're going to have. I do maintain "behind the scenes" storylines so that I can provide an ongoing, interesting and fun story, but it's up to my players how they interact with them, and the process is give and take - what they do affects the story, and what the story does affects them.

But the tl;dr is that I like the adventures, for my own reasons.

I value the prefabs because they pad my sessions. They take the pressure off so I can focus on creating the juicy bits.

I understand what you are saying but I would prefer to create the nemeses myself.

Seems I am alone in this, but interesting to hear some opinions on that.

I think I will avoid the adventure modules and fabricate my adventures the oldschool way .

Every published module I've used has been well-received by my players. So if we're using "players having fun" as a metric, then it had been money (and time) well-spent for me

Having said that, I liberally change things when I think they won't work well for my group, and coincidentally I think that where most of my more "interesting" bits come from...the plot twists, the moral choices, etc, are all character-driven and so, IMO, they cannot really be meaningfully written into a stock adventure. For my players to care at all about any twists in the plot, they need to have skin in the game: they need to be personally attached somehow to the decision being made, or they else they need to be affected in some meaningful way by "the big reveal."

Just imagine if the conversation at the end of Episode V went something like this:

Unless you're including pregens in your adventure (like Shadows of a Black Sun and Rescue At Glare Peak, both of which had really cool character-involvement ideas, especially for being essentially Convention games), I don't think there's any way you can expect the players to care about stuff that's written in a published a module. If they just feel like they're on a roller coaster, getting jerked around this way and that way by the twists embedded in a pre-written adventure, my contention is that they will start to experience burn-out. Better to change things around here and there to suit your group, using the published module, appropriately, as the valuable resource it is..

Every published module I've used has been well-received by my players. So if we're using "players having fun" as a metric, then it had been money (and time) well-spent for me

Having said that, I liberally change things when I think they won't work well for my group, and coincidentally I think that where most of my more "interesting" bits come from...the plot twists, the moral choices, etc, are all character-driven and so, IMO, they cannot really be meaningfully written into a stock adventure. For my players to care at all about any twists in the plot, they need to have skin in the game: they need to be personally attached somehow to the decision being made, or they else they need to be affected in some meaningful way by "the big reveal."

Just imagine if the conversation at the end of Episode V went something like this:

Unless you're including pregens in your adventure (like Shadows of a Black Sun and Rescue At Glare Peak, both of which had really cool character-involvement ideas, especially for being essentially Convention games), I don't think there's any way you can expect the players to care about stuff that's written in a published a module. If they just feel like they're on a roller coaster, getting jerked around this way and that way by the twists embedded in a pre-written adventure, my contention is that they will start to experience burn-out. Better to change things around here and there to suit your group, using the published module, appropriately, as the valuable resource it is..

Sorry, but I am thinking that my point wasn´t made very clear so I seem to invide many misunderstandings.

First off: In my opinion of course you can write an adventure with a moral dilemma or a twist and a turn without being character-tailored. And the most adventures that I have read in my years mostly at least tried that. The great character choices in your campaign naturally have to be homebrewn, and many published modules give you ideas how to make that work for your group (i.e. it provides you a damsel in distress but courages you to replace her with a group-specific NPC). And I don´t mean you need stellar choices to make a canned adventure worthwhile, the most plots draw a choice from the plot itself. I.e. the firefly train job episode has the plot that the group steals some stuff from the alliance only to find out that it is medicine the planet need desperately. In a pregen you would after presenting this job give some advice how you can tailor it for your group, i.e. giving reasons why they have to do the job so badly that this choice matters. After reading this, you can tailor it, making the motivation even stronger, i.e. the villain has the girlfriend of a hero and threatens to kill her if it is not delivered.

And when I have a better villain than the pregen, I can replace him, but that does not mean that the original bad guy have to be a bland nobody in the first place.

I mean, especially in a universe like EoE, where the players have a motivation like getting jobs and doing them, there are dozens of plot ideas (just read these forums) where you can universally take a good plot that is easily tailored for your needs. The pregens for i.e. KULT have it a lot harder in getting a coherant story that is interesting for a group, because the profile of KULT groups are a lot wider, ranging from cops, to students to work buddies to paranormal investigators. And there, every adventure module was great, the greater part outright excellent, and mostly universal enough to get your group involved. So I disagree on the notion that it´s not possible to write something universal and intriguing. In fact, I found good plots more often then not.

Maybe it´s just me, but a good story needs the most work and the action scenes come naturally. If I am needing moving parts, I go to sourcebooks, if I am needing just a rough sketch of an adventure I have to flesh out, I´ll just need adventure seeds.

I am not getting what would be disadventous having a good story I can tailor contra having a boring story I can tailor.

And in my opinion, I have not found even one pregen that I found outstanding.

Maybe I am to harsh on this. But as I said, I think that even a pregen should be more than a linear action story, those can be brewn together by a mediocre GM in one evening or even fully improvised.

But after reading this threat, maybe I should reflect on this and thinking about, if I am fail to get something. Either way, I will get something from this discussion.

I'm not going to address quality comments because there's no reason for me to feel defensive about making use of prefab content and mixing it in with my own content. I have a background in media and a link in my signature that will show you I'm winning at keeping my players interested and developing a compelling story.

This comes down to reality. Perfection is a finished product, not the ideal one. I am an adult, a business woman, and a single Mom. There's simply no room for me to cloister myself away for untold hours sketching out the greatest story ever told to like four people around a table top. That would be a poor use of my time, especially considering I have creative writing to publish and an FFG product to promote at a weekly drop-in event at a FLGS. Also a recently (albeit recently comatose) YouTube channel. I weave my ideas among the prefab content and shift and change the prefab however befits the scenario.

The prefabs give you a wide range of skill challenges as well. Things I likely wouldn't have considered including. My player base appreciates that diversity and it keeps them on their toes. Dumping their stats into ranged light isn't going to help them pass survival checks due to environmental conditions or wriggle through the cracks of tunnels delved on Selonia.

Moreover, one of the skill mechanics my players quite enjoyed was part of Corellian Shuffle, a prefab smuggling run where the players are timed on a series of ship to ship docking and micro hyperspace jumps.

Here's just off the top of my head some of the prefabs that I've included in some fashion:

Jewel of Yavin - Market Row scene

Corellian Shuffle

Sabaac on the Row

Tunnel Delving

EotE Beginner's Box

In fact - my players look fondly back on the latter, even though it was my first time ever being Game Mistress. In our universe, Trex almost killed the pilot, who was chased by the Trandoshan through the ship and locked himself in the cockpit to prep for launch and bleed out alone. Trex was pounding on the door and didn't notice the Jedi Exile come up and cut his arm off with a vibroknife. The poor guy died and the body was spaced, but it was such a hilarious and exciting scene that it remains with us even though it was not only prefab content but training wheels Beginner's Box content. Or the very first scene in that, when the Jedi Exile (us having misread the critical rule) utterly massacred the Gamorean thugs who came looking for trouble. THe moment she cut into the first one's neck, his coworker panicked, squealing and patting at his friend's neck as he tried to stop the bleeding. It was most certainly not a fight till the last man sort of scenario - it was paid thugs in a bar getting more than they expected. Because of that, we made fake ID for the Jedi called Miranda River because she looked so bathed in blood like River from Serenity.

I'm rambling, I know. My point is, content is what you make of it - players and game mistress both. Anything can be awesome and special. If I didn't make use of the prefab content we'd be playing a lot less often and maybe we'd lose interest and give up. I just don't have enough free time to write an opus for a few people to socialize over. If I did, I'd be selling it as fan fiction like 50 shades.

I'm not going to address quality comments because there's no reason for me to feel defensive about making use of prefab content and mixing it in with my own content. I have a background in media and a link in my signature that will show you I'm winning at keeping my players interested and developing a compelling story.

This comes down to reality. Perfection is a finished product, not the ideal one. I am an adult, a business woman, and a single Mom. There's simply no room for me to cloister myself away for untold hours sketching out the greatest story ever told to like four people around a table top. That would be a poor use of my time, especially considering I have creative writing to publish and an FFG product to promote at a weekly drop-in event at a FLGS. Also a recently (albeit recently comatose) YouTube channel. I weave my ideas among the prefab content and shift and change the prefab however befits the scenario.

The prefabs give you a wide range of skill challenges as well. Things I likely wouldn't have considered including. My player base appreciates that diversity and it keeps them on their toes. Dumping their stats into ranged light isn't going to help them pass survival checks due to environmental conditions or wriggle through the cracks of tunnels delved on Selonia.

Moreover, one of the skill mechanics my players quite enjoyed was part of Corellian Shuffle, a prefab smuggling run where the players are timed on a series of ship to ship docking and micro hyperspace jumps.

Here's just off the top of my head some of the prefabs that I've included in some fashion:

Jewel of Yavin - Market Row scene

Corellian Shuffle

Sabaac on the Row

Tunnel Delving

EotE Beginner's Box

In fact - my players look fondly back on the latter, even though it was my first time ever being Game Mistress. In our universe, Trex almost killed the pilot, who was chased by the Trandoshan through the ship and locked himself in the cockpit to prep for launch and bleed out alone. Trex was pounding on the door and didn't notice the Jedi Exile come up and cut his arm off with a vibroknife. The poor guy died and the body was spaced, but it was such a hilarious and exciting scene that it remains with us even though it was not only prefab content but training wheels Beginner's Box content. Or the very first scene in that, when the Jedi Exile (us having misread the critical rule) utterly massacred the Gamorean thugs who came looking for trouble. THe moment she cut into the first one's neck, his coworker panicked, squealing and patting at his friend's neck as he tried to stop the bleeding. It was most certainly not a fight till the last man sort of scenario - it was paid thugs in a bar getting more than they expected. Because of that, we made fake ID for the Jedi called Miranda River because she looked so bathed in blood like River from Serenity.

I'm rambling, I know. My point is, content is what you make of it - players and game mistress both. Anything can be awesome and special. If I didn't make use of the prefab content we'd be playing a lot less often and maybe we'd lose interest and give up. I just don't have enough free time to write an opus for a few people to socialize over. If I did, I'd be selling it as fan fiction like 50 shades.

Oh, I don´t want you to feel defensive about it. I´ll be stealing some things as well. My point is not to let others feel bad about using the prefab content, that´s a serious misunderstanding. And I criticize the modules and not what your doing with them, I don´t doubt either that you can keep our players invested.

But with your background, I want to emphacize my point: I have not much time as in my student years as well. Reaching middle 30, a life partner, a very stressy job in the movie industrie, also about creative writing. But that´s exactly my point. I expect an adventure module to save me the time to write and plot for hours, I expect them to give me a compelling story I can tailor fast in 1-2 hours or so. And normally, these modules can deliver that.

You can see it also on your lists. That are all situations to fit in, and they are totally fine, I used i.e. Sabacc on the row myself. But there is not one coherent plot you like best. Imagine what time you could have saved if you bought for the same money great plots you only need to tweak a bit. Being in this tense situation as you are in, that would be great, wouldn´t it? Or better, imagine you could do both, taking great plots AND using and mixing great content.

I have got more time than you have, being no father, so I can cloister myself once in a while. But especially for people like you, I think great plots would be a real treasure.

It was a 'brand new' system and we are discussing the first module, where players and GMs were all still fairly new in the system. I highly doubt any first module, in any system, ever aimed for any Machiavellian triple crosses and intricate sub plots.

It was a 'brand new' system and we are discussing the first module, where players and GMs were all still fairly new in the system. I highly doubt any first module, in any system, ever aimed for any Machiavellian triple crosses and intricate sub plots.

Okay, don´t wanna be nickpicky, but mostly, the first are even under the best usually. Here are some examples

Shadowrun "Mercurial" Publishing date 1989, core publishing date 1989.

Kult "Fallen Angels" Publishing date 1994, core publishing date (english) 1993

Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying "Peril at King´s Landing", nearly back-to-back with the core 2008.

Dragon Age "Blood in Ferelden". The first 3 adventures for the system. All good.

Serenity "Serenity adventures", even more so.

And that´s only a few examples. All I´m saying that I would like to get my hands on one good pregen. Look at the career seeds fabricated from this community, they are mostly more intriguing than the pregens of the company. The adventure modules seem to be a bit lazy compared to other products.

Rules are legendary, supplements are cool, adventures a bit lame I would say.

It probably just comes down to the fact that you can't please everyone.

In all probability there is a good portion of the consumer base that is gonna LOVE everything that FFG prints simply because "It's FFG," or "It's Star Wars." I might well be in that category, simply looking for any reason at all to love these products

And then there's always gonna be people that hate everything that FFG prints for Star Wars because "It's not WEG," or "It's not WotC," or "There's no Jedi," or "custom dice are stupid," or what have you.

But for most of the consumer base, there are products that some people are gonna love for ABC reasons and other people don't love for XYZ reasons. So while some people might like the book in question for the art, the modularity, the extra crunch (NPC stats/creatures/weapons/etc), or the story opportunities; others might feel let down by any number of omissions. And to top it off, one man's compelling story elements might just be another man's needless over-complications.

So...bottom line, even though I don't feel the same way, I can definitely understand the points in the OP (and the clarifications) and say yeah, they're certainly legitimate. As food for thought, one could try and get some plot-enriching ideas from the community here or on other sites...the Order 66 podcast over at d20radio.com/forums is a great resource. That way the purchase wouldn't be as much of a waste!

Rules are legendary, supplements are cool, adventures a bit lame I would say.

I remember that Mercurial adventure, that was good...as a read. I never had time, and nobody else had the interest, to run it though. I think some of this might depend on how frequently you can play. I've managed tri-weekly for a while now, but it's a weeknight, sessions are short. So it would be pointless for me to expect to be able to run a multi-session adventure with intricate plot twists, etc. I'm not saying I don't put them in, but they're either session-based (the guy you met at the beginning of tonight's session...isn't a "guy" at all!), or will impact the entire story arc (the senator you've been trusting for all those missions has sold you out!). For a 3 session adventure in the middle of the campaign it becomes harder to pull that off mostly because, for my players anyway, remembering who's who and how they feel about them is more difficult.

Another factor might be how invested the players are in the world. Shadowrun, if I recall correctly, kind of demanded that players know something about the world, the 2050 event (or whatever it was). If I remember Mercurial, it required that kind of player knowledge to proceed. My players aren't really Star Wars fans, so my characters and plot twists and moral dilemmas have to be relatable, and honestly I don't have a problem inventing them on the fly. I find it far easier to be inspired by a snippet from a module and run a session around that, than trying to run a module "by the book".

Anyway, that's the context that informs my opinion of the FFG modules. I've gotten great use out of them, even the ones I haven't run yet (like Jewel of Yavin). They have been very helpful when learning how to play and how to scale encounters. There's stuff in BtR I still use regularly, e.g.: modelling a creature's swarm attack, and I expect I'll be mining these adventures for a long time to come.

They have been very helpful when learning how to play and how to scale encounters. There's stuff in BtR I still use regularly, e.g.: modelling a creature's swarm attack, and I expect I'll be mining these adventures for a long time to come.

This, very much. I've gotten more use out of adventure modules over the long haul in this manner, without even touching the actual adventures themselves.

Edit: not that I haven't run the adventures, but that I've gotten more use out of them treating them simply as source material.

I know the adventures taught me how to use dice pools more creatively and in a sort of holistic way as opposed to a linear go/no go fashion. It got me out of the trap a lot of GMs get into with story choke points, for instance make the Computer roll to open the locked door into the evil genius' laboratory.

I set my rolls up where getting in the door is going to happen, and they might choose to be sneaky and use Computers or Skulduggery to pick a lock. Instead a linear interpretation of where success equals they make entry and failure equals we all look stupid at each other around the gaming table. Failure might mean they get in but the alarm goes off, a Despair might mean the person doing the slicing also gets an electrical shock on top of that. Success means they get in without alerting anyone, and a Triumph means they disable the alarm system in the whole place, or they get some maintenance back door/password into the system for use later.

I came to start doing that after reading some of the more elaborate results charts for dice rolls in one of the adventures. Which one escapes me, but the point is the adventures are as much about providing new ideas, ways to use the system, and additional content, as they are about just providing a story. There is value in them beyond whether or not they're nominated for a Hugo award for scifi literary genius.