Last year I ran a session of F&D with my group around a fire while camping and it was awesome! The session was played out almost entirely through roleplaying due to the fact that we didn't want to lose any dice in the fire, and it took about 3-4 hours. I had a small table with a dice tower and all the dice next to me if someone wanted to roll, I would do it for them like GM's of old .

We played through a Trial of Insight where the group was separated and each person was imprisoned or alone without the ability to reach out to their friends. They went through a simulation test, although they were not aware it was a simulation, to see how they reacted to different situations and stimuli to provoke them into using the Force, keeping calm, or defending/attacking someone. I tailored each individual "quest" for each person/PC that featured their emotional strength and weakness, as well as testing their morality and giving them choices to see where it would lead them.

All but one person passed, (the one that didn't did so intentionally due to his curious nature of the Dark side and excellent roleplaying) and the Trial itself was a test from their soon-to-be Jedi mentor, Elaiza.

Well, here we are another year later continuing the same campaign from before but now most of the PC's are well past Knight level (400+ XP), they have multiple Force skills, and all but one are Force Rating of 2-4. They are returning home from a successful mission to discover more about a lost Jedi Master and her ship, but unfortunately were found out by the Imperials...although they got away and the PC's will now be finding themselves wanted to the highest degree having used the Force and lightsabers during the fight.

They will be going back home and I thought it would be cool to run a Trial of Skill from the Nexus of Power book, but that requires A LOT of rolling dice instead of roleplaying through it all...and I really wanted to give them a personal challenge by their mentor to help them grow as Jedi and eventually be deemed an official "Knight" by the standards left from the days of old (kind of because the council isn't around).

If anyone else has any other cool ideas on something to run that would be mostly RP I would be glad to hear new ideas!

Some folks have used playing cards in lieu of dice in instances like this, but I can't imagine how one could make it work easily for this system.

I've also rolled dice into a big flat-bottomed bowl outside to avoid the aforementioned kiss of flame. Sounds like a blast to play at your campfire!

I'd just use a dice roller ap.

It sounds hella fun though.

Interesting topic for me, as I'm planning a new campaign for my son which will involve his PC going from late Padawan to full Knight. This means trials. But I have to admit I'm not a fan of how Nexus of Power laid this out. It's too structured. The movies and TCW seem to emphasize that "the trials" are really just a measure of the Padawan's performance on a given mission. Sure, there might not always be a mission that tests the Padawan appropriately, so there is probably a more formalized process for those deemed "ready", but it's telling that all those happen off-screen to characters that are not central to the story. The characters we care about are tested by the events we get to follow. It should be the same for an RPG.

So, like what you've said, for me the campaign *is* the test. The PC will face numerous challenges of skill, emotion, and morality over the course of the campaign, but there won't be a specific dice roll or set of rolls that one could point to and say "that's a Skill test", etc. Honestly, the only thing useful I got from Nexus of Power was some locations and relative difficulty levels.

The campaign will revolve around a murder mystery that seems simple enough but escalates. Since I just watched season 1 of Fargo, that's kind of the idea I'm going for The Padawan is a Sentinel type with a master that deals a lot with Coruscant underworld. The setting is a long time before BoY (Yoda might make an appearance as a young mischievous trickster always pulling pranks on people), and it might eventually involve the Sith...perhaps they got a little cocky too soon, and this experience will drive them deeper underground until the time of Palpatine...

On 5/26/2017 at 4:47 PM, Ahrimon said:

I'd just use a dice roller ap.

It sounds hella fun though.

I totally forgot about using an app for this! I think I will probably end up going this direction with the session because I can't think of anything that will last a few hours and be very RP-heavy right now.

On 5/26/2017 at 7:38 PM, whafrog said:

Interesting topic for me, as I'm planning a new campaign for my son which will involve his PC going from late Padawan to full Knight. This means trials. But I have to admit I'm not a fan of how Nexus of Power laid this out. It's too structured. The movies and TCW seem to emphasize that "the trials" are really just a measure of the Padawan's performance on a given mission. Sure, there might not always be a mission that tests the Padawan appropriately, so there is probably a more formalized process for those deemed "ready", but it's telling that all those happen off-screen to characters that are not central to the story. The characters we care about are tested by the events we get to follow. It should be the same for an RPG.

So, like what you've said, for me the campaign *is* the test. The PC will face numerous challenges of skill, emotion, and morality over the course of the campaign, but there won't be a specific dice roll or set of rolls that one could point to and say "that's a Skill test", etc. Honestly, the only thing useful I got from Nexus of Power was some locations and relative difficulty levels.

The campaign will revolve around a murder mystery that seems simple enough but escalates. Since I just watched season 1 of Fargo, that's kind of the idea I'm going for The Padawan is a Sentinel type with a master that deals a lot with Coruscant underworld. The setting is a long time before BoY (Yoda might make an appearance as a young mischievous trickster always pulling pranks on people), and it might eventually involve the Sith...perhaps they got a little cocky too soon, and this experience will drive them deeper underground until the time of Palpatine...

I totally agree that the campaign itself can serve as their Trial(s) but I was thinking about making the Trial of Skill a bit more formal with direct coaching from their mentor since the group usually goes off on their own to do missions.

The initial Trial of Insight was a success because of how it was utilized to show the characters how they can use their abilities, how to resolve situations alone, and how to see through deception...as well as introducing them to their new mentor. It set a good benchmark for where their level of skill was and where we could go next.

So far they have fought and defeated a Sith Inquisitor, lost one of the group to the Dark side and ended up killing him after he attacked their mentor, and one of the PC's lost his arm from a critical hit from a disruptor pistol. In my book I would take that to mean that the Trials of Courage and Flesh have been completed by all of them, the only 2 left are the Trial of Skill and Spirit.

Even though the setup is a bit formalized for the Trial of Skill, I will probably alter it slightly to be more fitting to my PC's and add or remove a few things to allow for a better well-rounded session. My biggest concern with this lies with the fact that only 2 of 4 have the Force Move ability, so I may have to find a way around that one still....