As a new GM to this system I am struggling in a few areas. My old DnD mindset takes over sometimes. I am trying to come up with better encounters for my PC's. Both combat and non combat. I want them to feel more involved and dynamic. I feel mine can be kind of flat sometimes. I have done the simple things like add terrain and such, but I was hoping more veteran GM's could chime in and give some advice. I am also looking for the PC's perspective. What kind of encounters have you enjoyed from your GM?

Have you run any of the canned stuff, like the ones in the books or the freebies? Do you have the sourcebooks? The have modular encounters in them that are nice.

Terrain is just the first step, adding in environmenal effects, dynamic terrain (i.e. red exploding barrels etc etc). Playing your NPC's as intelligent and willing to retreat if things look like they aren't going their way.

In my last session, my group was stealing a hyperdrive in transit from a train (ala Firefly). There happened to be a metric ton of stormtroopers and 3 inquisitors on said train -and- the PC's set a proton grenade bomb. So there was a simultaneous shoot-out/lightsaber duel/heist going on on the top of this still moving at extremely fast speeds train. The Heavy almost lost his treasured heavy repeating blaster, got knocked out by one of his own shots when it got improved reflected. The smuggler convinced a squad of stormtroopers that he was really an Imperial intelligence agent, then gunned them all down from behind. One of the force sensitives lost a leg and fell from the train, but their pilot who had -just- come up alongside the train managed to get their ship underneath him and caught him. They strapped up the hyperdrive and jumped onto their ship and gtfo'd leaving one really really angry Inquisitor behind on a half-destroyed train.

And all of that started from me going "I want to design an encounter on a train." and I ended up running probably my best session yet. Granted it took my some time (about 6 months of steadily improving) to get to there.

Something else I'd advise, go and watch your favorite sci-fi/fantasy movies. Take notes on where the climactic fights, or dramatic dialogue scenes take place. Work those into your encounter building.

Secondly, be creative with not only your Despair/Triumph's but also your Adv/Disadv. this is Star Wars, so rule of cool overrides RAW in my opinion. If you role a triumph, have your villain knock them down, or shoot their weapon from their hand, even if they don't have the RAW ability to do so. Like in my above example, I had one of the Inquisitor's roll a ton of adv on a lightsaber check, so what I did with it was he forced the former Padawan he was fighting to the edge of the train, and then the next round, he cut off his leg and pushed him off the train.

And lastly, mix it up a bit. You -need- those simple straightforward fights, where it isn't really complicated and the plan is "Get em Ray", having those will really make the scenes where your meticulously planned heist went to hell in a handbasket because you found 3 inquisitors on this train you were trying to rob stand out in your PC's minds.

I gave some beginner pointers here - https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/194352-kotor-session-zero-fd/?p=1908661
Let me know if that's not what you meant, and I'll cook a proper replay

@BigSpoon How do you deal with having someone with a Heavy Repeating Blaster? I have a player that can get 43 damage with autofire, rarely misses because his gunnery is so good and I struggle to make challenging encounters.

@BigSpoon How do you deal with having someone with a Heavy Repeating Blaster? I have a player that can get 43 damage with autofire, rarely misses because his gunnery is so good and I struggle to make challenging encounters.

So to answer your question, I've done several things: first is a house rule, you can only activate auto fire a number of times equal to your brawn (which none of them is higher than a three). Secondly, I don't hesitate to use auto fire against them either, they know this and accept it. Thirdly, I throw lots of bodies at them, minion groups of 2, give you a YG on their turn and will eat a turn of shooting, yeah they'll be wiped out but it's very inefficient for the PC's to throw 40-60 damage at a group that'll only take 15 to kill. And then on the other hand, I usually give my big bads squads to back them up, in which case it doesn't matter how much damage they do, one hit is just one kill with a squad, -and- they have to target the guy with adversary ranks.

Lastly, if you feel that a encounter is going to easily for them, don't be afraid to throw another minion group or three at them. Oh and I haven't tried it out yet, but sometime soon I'll be throwing things with the "swarm" special ability at them, half damage from everything but burn and blast IIRC

@BigSpoon How do you deal with having someone with a Heavy Repeating Blaster? I have a player that can get 43 damage with autofire, rarely misses because his gunnery is so good and I struggle to make challenging encounters.

Create places where one simply cannot bring a long gun. Do you ever see James Bond sit down for Baccarat with an M240?

Craft encounter where the PCs simply can't be so overtly combat oriented, they have to be more subtle.

Create areas where space is a premium and they can't swing big guns around. Think the escape in the ventilation shafts in Aliens.

Attending social functions where they have to dress down and the challenge becomes who can mod the meanest holdout blaster.

They are summoned to some Hutt's palace and told no big guns.

A spaceport they are at has strict weapon and armor laws.

Recon missions, where engaging at all with any weapons equals failure as they are detected.

Undercover infiltration missions where they can't lug support machine guns with them.

The cantina in this port doesn't serve droids and they don't allow machine guns, and that's where their benefactor is waiting to pay them.

@BigSpoon How do you deal with having someone with a Heavy Repeating Blaster? I have a player that can get 43 damage with autofire, rarely misses because his gunnery is so good and I struggle to make challenging encounters.

What 2P51 wrote plus putting sometimes rival or nemesis with that kind of weapon.

As a new GM to this system I am struggling in a few areas. My old DnD mindset takes over sometimes. I am trying to come up with better encounters for my PC's. Both combat and non combat. I want them to feel more involved and dynamic. I feel mine can be kind of flat sometimes. I have done the simple things like add terrain and such, but I was hoping more veteran GM's could chime in and give some advice. I am also looking for the PC's perspective. What kind of encounters have you enjoyed from your GM?

Chases. The D&D mindset, which some of my players have a hard time dropping, seems to usually be "stand there and take it until the enemies are defeated". It makes chases hard to initiate. So it helps to make the opposition *clearly* overwhelming, and give them a way to exit. Keep the scene moving, they need to escape, or hunt someone down, or get to the drop zone before X rounds, or...

Also, intersperse your chases with "down time". Maybe they get ahead, and can hide in an old tenement building. Maybe this leads to a couple of rounds of Negotiate/Charm/Coerce the residents to helping them find a secret way through the sewers or some other way to avoid their opponents. Gives them a couple rounds to slap on stimpacks, etc. before charging into the fray again.

@BigSpoon How do you deal with having someone with a Heavy Repeating Blaster? I have a player that can get 43 damage with autofire, rarely misses because his gunnery is so good and I struggle to make challenging encounters.

Create places where one simply cannot bring a long gun. Do you ever see James Bond sit down for Baccarat with an M240?

Craft encounter where the PCs simply can't be so overtly combat oriented, they have to be more subtle.

Create areas where space is a premium and they can't swing big guns around. Think the escape in the ventilation shafts in Aliens.

Attending social functions where they have to dress down and the challenge becomes who can mod the meanest holdout blaster.

They are summoned to some Hutt's palace and told no big guns.

A spaceport they are at has strict weapon and armor laws.

Recon missions, where engaging at all with any weapons equals failure as they are detected.

Undercover infiltration missions where they can't lug support machine guns with them.

The cantina in this port doesn't serve droids and they don't allow machine guns, and that's where their benefactor is waiting to pay them.

Yes, also all of this.

Thank you everyone for your replies. A little more info about my campaign.

- It is an evil campaign. I have dark side force users and others. Think very dark. Like Hannibal Lector dark. This brings new challenges for me as I have never done a campaign like it before.

- I have no min/maxers.

- I am playing with star wars vets that know a lot more than I do about the universe. This has not been an issue though, but I want to throw in some obscure stuff for them.

- It is very free roam. They do not seem to have a goal in mind besides power, money, infamy. Typical bad guy stuff. I am trying to come up with several options for them. My goal is to make some missions and opportunities for them along the way, but to have them drive the story. I am more reacting to what they want to do. Making encounters to throw at them. They are currently stranded on Thule (a nice dark side planet) so I can test my story making and encounter designs before letting them loose on the galaxy as well as eventually getting the force users lightsabers (there is a sith temple on the planet after all) before they leave. I want to make the lightsaber crafting a very good story arc, that can involve my non force users.

- My players are mostly all gaming vets of a lot of years. I am as well so it helps. They are also very intelligent so I like to test and use that.

I made a group of force users who will oppose them (they me a few of them last time). So I have the beginnings of a few cool nemesis's.

I want the force to be a big part of this campaign, but I am sticking with EotE as I do not like the morality system and it would be a waste anyway as they are dark.

Non combat encounter designs are difficult for me sometimes, but I want to include a decent amount.

I still think the modular encounters in the various sourcebooks can be a good guide on structuring basic checks. Between them and the adventures in the CRBs and the freebie PDF one, there is some pretty good stuff to draw on for ideas on how to set up non combat encounters.

I think you're potentially missing out on not using Morality because just being bad is no challenge at all and I would think that will grow stale quickly. The fun of a dark side campaign would be that everyone is hunting them, good and bad. It isn't like the emperor is going to let some upstart dark siders roam free. The fun in my mind would be setting up adventures where in order to beat/survive/escape Vader and Inquisitor forces, your bad PCs actually have to end up doing 'good' things, and at the same time dodge light side force users and rebels.

I found a Random Adventure/Encounter generator tables document in my collection after some time of looking through the files, here is a link to the Google drive it is in: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_79aQl2bby5dUdWWWZMbmI4UTA

Hopefully you guys can access that file from this link. It only requires a d100 and d10, I think, so it should be pretty straighforward. There are no copyright notices in the file, which makes me think it is fan-generated from a previous version of the SW RPG. Let me know if you have trouble getting the file, and I will see what I can do to share it.

I found a Random Adventure/Encounter generator tables document in my collection after some time of looking through the files, here is a link to the Google drive it is in: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_79aQl2bby5dUdWWWZMbmI4UTA

That link tries to force me to sign into Google drive, and then it tells me that I no longer have access to it.

Ah, then I will put it in Dropbox. I am still new to these tools, google drive and dropbox, so it may take me a few tries to get it right. Sorry about that.

Ok, here is the shared dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b5stzdkbohvcfho/Random%20Adventure%20Tables.pdf?dl=0

It's the only file in the box atm, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. I was looking at this, and it seems to cover several eras of play, as you might see when looking at it. Just change whichever options you don't want to use in your rolls, to whatever will fit into the era of play you are using.

Ok, here is the shared dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/b5stzdkbohvcfho/Random%20Adventure%20Tables.pdf?dl=0

Yoink!

I found that making battlemaps for the encounters seems to help. It's not necessary for the system of course, but just like my players appreciate having a visual aid when making decisions in combat, it helps me during the planning because I can see exactly what terrain is around there and what useful things the PCs might be able to do.

Also, if you are including terrain that the PCs aren't using, have the NPCs take advantage of it. Monkey see, monkey do.