Hi all,

Some friends and I are interested in trying the system. As none of us have played it before, I'm deciding to take up the mantle of GM for us. My question is how do the published adventures scale in terms of difficulty. What I am planning on doing is running "Escape from Mos Shuuta" as the first installment so my friends and I can learn the system. Then probably move into "Long Arm of the Hutt." I then want to run the "Jewel of Yavin." Some of the information that I read online is that Jewel should be for higher level parties.

Is there a recommended progression for the published adventures?

Not so much. The game really seems to emphasize an open-world approach in a lot of cases, which can be frustrating for GMs who usually or prefer to run adventures out of a module. I might recommend Beyond the Rim first, since that has plenty of opportunity for advancing their characters to a level that might make Jewel of Yavin a more level experience. You could also consider Mask of the Pirate Queen , but that adventure tends to be divisive.

Another option might be to cannibalize Onslaught at Arda I , and have Edge players hired to assist with the evacuation and get sucked into the traitor intrigue.

It certainly feels like all adventures are balanced around starting characters and weak, uncreative, poor groups without a starship with big, terrifying guns.

Or they assume that GMs will scare their players with BoSS enough that they do not even fire their guns on unknown, inhabited, dead dessert worlds … just slightly bitter about official adventures, which have are a very linear and "d&d'esk" feel.

I ran a slightly altered version of the Jewel of Yavin as my finale to end a year long campaign, so I would suggest holding off on that IMO. You can alter the difficulty of some things, but it's fairly complex and starting another module might make things easier. You can always run the adventure from the back of the core rule book or the one that comes with the GM Screen Kit first before you start digging into the long and more complicated modules.

The Beginner Games are clearly aimed at beginners, and low-level characters. Same with the follow-up adventures that are available for download from FFG.

As for the rest, it varies. There are some suggested sequences for running the different adventures, but you’ll have to use the search function at the very top of the page to find them.

EDIT: Jewel of Yavin is definitely a more advanced adventure. Even with pretty high-level characters, that can be a real challenge to get through. FFG has published other adventures that are more low-level than JoY.

I vastly prefer the AoR published adventures to the EotE ones, so much so that don't believe I've ever written anything of my own for my little group of Rebels in our Age of Rebellion adventures.

That said, I prefer to play it by ear when it comes to EotE—writing my own stuff session-to-session, mostly while in session. That way there's nothing linear about it I will totally borrow ideas from published modules, but I never run them as written. Just doesn't work for me.

I don't know that there is a recommended progression beyond what you as the GM feel the group can handle. The beginner box adventures are a very good way for players to learn the dice and rules system and get any mistakes out of the way, as it were. The adventures in the back of the core books are very good places to start an actual campaign, and the modules that come with the GM screens are nice follow-ups to the core book adventures. And they have rules and ideas that may come in handy when you start writing your own campaign. After that, as I said, it comes down to what you think the group can handle. And, ultimately, it's your game. If the players are having too easy, or too hard of a time with a module or adventure, change it.

Thanks for all the great feedback. I know that at least one of my players has prior experience with mainly d&d style rpg's, he's told me that the dice will probably be the major hang up in the beginning, as I've read through the beginners game it seems to do a good job of introducing the dice, that's why I'll begin with that one first to ease the players into the system. That's a good idea about cannibalizing parts of the adventures for the campaign. I'll keep that in mind since hopefully I'll get to run it this weekend with my friends. Thanks again for the good pointers

One thing which I kind of forgot to mentioned:

Group composition and encounter design seems to be the real key element. The game is so rich in options, builds and possibilities that this really becomes a key element. There is a counter against everything. Literally everything. But some of those are very specific while other abilities are strong in most situations, etc

The more diverse a group, the stronger and more creative in problem and combat solution the group becomes … at least to my experience.

Sorry!, I'm somewhat late to the discussion. I'm well aware that you've already closed the topic, Agent.

I'm gonna share my insights anyhow, for what they matter.

The published adventures I've had a look at, so far, are well balanced for a diverse group of four at about knight level, only a wee bit challenging at some points, but nothing insurmountable. They can be a little trickier for characters fresh from the Academy, but still doable, with, perhaps, a little help here and there. When your players are nearing the upper echelons of a few hundred XP, the adventures will need some tinkering with the difficulty; my players are somewhere between 600 and 750 XP now, and I'm planning to run the Jewel soon.

Here's how I approach those adventures, when deciding, whether, how, and when to run them:

1) Does the story fit my campaign, and can the PCs be interested in the plot? - If so, I'll run it.

2) How does the story feel in ways of intricacy, complexity, and impact? What range of experience would it fit best (not the difficulty of checks, just the overall feel)? - I'll either run it straight away or earmark it for later use at the appropriate time.

3) When the time has finally come, I will analyse the different encounters and rank them by their importance from sidetracks to bottlenecks.

a) First, I'll look at the bottlenecks and compare the difficulty of the checks to the profifiency (total of green and yellow) of the likely agent:

- Proficiency is three or more higher than difficulty: Too easy; I'll need a plausible manner of increasing the difficulty, adding further complication, or keeping the primary agent busy someplace else and replacing them by the backup (if there is someone suitable in the group).

- Profifiency is one or two higher: Swell! On to the next encounter.

- Proficiency is equal to or less than difficulty: Too incalcuable; decrease the difficulty (if plausibly possible) or provide outside help or a workaround (in addition to the one provided in the publication, hopefully).

b) On to the minor encounters; same procedure:

- Profifiency to high: Should I increase the challenge or maybe keep it to provide the players with a moment of grandeur?

- Proficiency to low: Does it matter? How bad are the consequences of failure? Is this an opportunity to put the players back into their place without breaking their morale?

Overall, the most important thing at my table (considering the players' character and mine) is keeping things plausible: Don't stretch the suspension of disbelief to far: A crass example is being chased by Darth Vader in Glare Peak; at the start of their career the players would've abandoned the mission and run, and rightly so. Now, at 700 XP, they're at least contemplating staying a little longer.

Grimmerling, thanks for the great advice of scaling the difficulty of the encounters. That is a good thing for me to keep in the back of my mind when it comes to the difficulty of encounters. I think originally I was confused with the adventures not having an advertised difficulty (eg. four level 3 pcs, etc...) Like d&d does with its adventures. This advice it will allow me to tailor the adventures better to the party. I'll definitely add that knowledge to my holocron. Thanks again.