Basically, my players decided that their Force Users should try to get real kyber crystals instead of the synthetic / training crystals they have now. They are going to a forgotten Jedi temple (I am using a modified Dawn Temple). While I could just have crystals being there, I would like to have the characters go on some kind of vision quest. Unfortunately, half of my group are not really into the Force. I thought about doing sessions with single characters, but we play only once or twice a month anyway due to time constraints and I am loath to spend valuable gaming time without the full group.

I have two Force Sensitives and two muggles, um, Non-Force Users. I want to create something special for the wannabe Jedi, but I also do not want to have the others twiddling their thumbs. I tend towards having the Force Sensitives black out and experience their quest and trials mentally, while the others have to to protect them, but I wonder if there are more elegant solutions.

You could let the muggles play adversarial roles in the trials, rather than playing their own characters, and splitting the party.

1 hour ago, Edgehawk said:

You could let the muggles play adversarial roles in the trials, rather than playing their own characters, and splitting the party.

I second that emotion. It could be fun for those players to interact with familiar PCs through different, and possibly antagonistic, characters.

-Nate

Another thought is to not tell anyone it's a vision, don't make it seem like one. Have everything actually happen as if it normally were and when the vision is over, whether the trial was passed or not, suddenly everyone wakes up, their characters are unharmed/alive if a character happened to die and they realize it was a vision, a trial.

Or you could split the party. Have the non Force Sensitives do a job while they wait for their pals to finish up their vision quest.

In one group, we had 1 Force Sensitive, and when he had his vision experience I made him leave the room with me for a few minutes so I could talk something over with him. I secretly left the rest of the group a note, which explained that the following scene was just the Forcie's vision, and that they should play their characters as antagonists and tap into his fears. Needless to say, the Force User was super confused how the scene played out, but I think they all enjoyed it in the end.

In another campaign, there were 4 Force Users plus their mentor and 2 Rebels. During a Vision quest, I prepared a short encounter for every player and split them up, having only the active player in the room. When it was the rebels turn, they were with the mentor and saw him experience a vision, mumbling incoherently and collapsing. They helped him onto his feet and questioned him what happened, learning about his backstory which ties in with the rest of the campaign.

Hope this gives you some inspiration.

I decided to use some ideas from this thread:

I brought the players of the Non-Force Users on board. The vision will start without the others knowing and they get ambushed by bad guys - a whole pack of Inquisitors. My aim is to press the Force Sensitives and just kill the rest who know what is supposed to happen and will play along. I hope that freaks them out a bit. Then we will segue more clearly into the vision, with half of the group taking over NPCs that test the others, figures from their past, enemies, allies and the like.

EDIT: Forgot to thank you all for your suggestions!

I'd be inclined to set up a vision situation where you don't have to be force-sensitive to interact with it - everyone can be drawn in, even if the non-sensitives deal with fewer consequences after the fact.

Alternately, it doesn't need to be a vision as such, just something that requires insight.

Good suggestions and good choice- playing it all out like it's an astral quest or a deep dive a la Shadowrun is a good way to go. Splitting the party and going from short scene to short scene is a fine method as well if you're ever so inclined. It definitely follows the style of a Star Wars movie- as long as you're comfortable narrating your game your way and your players don't mind either, it's definitely a viable way to do that scene.

In my game, the force vision was optional- they didn't know it was coming until everyone had decided whether or not they were going to yield to curiousity and go swimming in the creepy underground river underneath the spooky temple. Fortunately, 4 out of 6 of them went for it. Even the droid PC got a vision of a sort, but that was more of a bit of opportunistic storytelling in keeping with that character's ongoing quest for self-realsation. The bonus of this exercise was that not a single one of these characters is a Force-Sensitive, and it was all just an effort to make them question their assessment of the risk-vs-reward factor in questionable treasure-hunting, as well as their own sanity.

I put my players through a Force vision quest in my previous campaign, which featured two Force Users and two non-Force Users. For the non-Force Users, I made sure they had something to do while the other two players did their quest. Namely, they were separated from their comrades via plot convenience and had the opportunity to explore a lost temple and find an artifact. I simply jumped back and forth between the two groups as they did their thing.

Work it out in-game. IC.

From a PC POV, how are those two going to feel about risking life and limb for some crystal thingy??? Are they going to be down for that kind of risk? A shrewd PC is going to leverage some credits out of this.

IRL, I look at it like this.... Two of my friends want to drive 8hrs down to Atlanta to visit the Coca-Cola museum. I have no interest in doing this, but it is our group's week off of work. We're sticking together. I my cut deal..... they pay for gas and meals (or hotel cost) and we'll put up with your choice of trips. IMO, the PC's leverage something like, "All items and credits except the crystals." I think they should bargain from that starting point.

Just ran a session where a player managed to pass the Discipline check required for his Trial of Spirit. Had primed him earlier in the day by asking if his PC fears anything and telling him I would call upon him to describe that down the road... threw the check at him that night when he was "searching for Force stuff" in the cave the group was heading into, he passed the check, so I told him to describe in detail his greatest fears appearing in front of him and how he overcomes those fears. He add-libbed it and did great, I was on the edge of my seat during the description (he went super in-depth!) it only took a few minutes but during the course of it, his PC was kind of sleep-walking ahead, one of the others stopped him from going too far ahead of the others. He was kinda sweaty and his newly acquired holocron was glowing through his trenchcoat. It was good stuffs. He asked about a kyber crystal if the cave has to do with the Force and I responded by telling him that the cave is a dark side cave and the mechanical aspects of a minor dark vergence. We ended things with the group about to get into combat with a giant cave spider...

On 6/18/2017 at 3:16 AM, GroggyGolem said:

We ended things with the group about to get into combat with a giant cave spider...

Giant spiders are the worst, just ask Samwise Gamgee

1 hour ago, Matt Skywalker said:

Giant spiders are the worst, just ask Samwise Gamgee

This one is around that size too, about to scale with the size increase from hobbit to human. Silhouette 2.

On 16.6.2017 at 11:34 PM, DurosSpacer said:

From a PC POV, how are those two going to feel about risking life and limb for some crystal thingy??? Are they going to be down for that kind of risk? A shrewd PC is going to leverage some credits out of this.

Well, the group has passed that stage some time ago. They are more like "Return of the Jedi" than "Star Wars", having had a couple of adventures together, sharing risk, loss and rewards. The Non-Force Users also see it as a necessity, because the group feels that there will be a confrontation with some bad people sooner or later - I do not know how they came to that conclusion, maybe the Inquisitor hunting them gave them a hint ...

On 18.6.2017 at 3:16 AM, GroggyGolem said:

Just ran a session where a player managed to pass the Discipline check required for his Trial of Spirit. Had primed him earlier in the day by asking if his PC fears anything and telling him I would call upon him to describe that down the road... threw the check at him that night when he was "searching for Force stuff" in the cave the group was heading into, he passed the check, so I told him to describe in detail his greatest fears appearing in front of him and how he overcomes those fears. He add-libbed it and did great, I was on the edge of my seat during the description (he went super in-depth!) it only took a few minutes but during the course of it, his PC was kind of sleep-walking ahead, one of the others stopped him from going too far ahead of the others. He was kinda sweaty and his newly acquired holocron was glowing through his trenchcoat. It was good stuffs. He asked about a kyber crystal if the cave has to do with the Force and I responded by telling him that the cave is a dark side cave and the mechanical aspects of a minor dark vergence. We ended things with the group about to get into combat with a giant cave spider...

That sounds awesome, great work. I plan on including the players, too, at first those of the Non-Force Users, and as the vision progresses, the others, too. Thanks for pointers!

Incidentally, later on there will be giant spiders, too