Hi All!

I have been getting into RPG games of recent times and trying out different systems. I run (using pregenerated content) a couple of games of DnD each week at my FLGS which has been awesome and I was taken by the Force and Destiny book and how pretty it was along with the EotE book. So investment aside, I have 2 books, the Force Awakens Starter box and 3 sets of dice.

Now, I'm approx $200 AUD in and have this idea for a game but struggling for resources/things or ways to make my ideas work. Yes there are adversaries in the books and I figured I could just rename some of the profiles to suit as needed but as I am not as invested in the lore as some of my players (I am more of the person who loves the setting, really enjoyed the movies, thinks the best was 5, but hasn't read any of the other fiction surrounding the setting).

I'm starting to run a campaign on Felucia, this world chosen because it's outer rim, it's not abundantly inhabited by imperial forces, it's got history regarding force users either coming from here or being here before and the population are noted for being slightly more force sensitive than some others. It's also a jungle world which is what I had in mind as well.

Now to get into the game intro - The group of players are all (most made from Force and Destiny or have made from EotE) stranded in a remote section of this remote world after being identified as being force sensitive by an exiled Jedi Master (not named, actually dead as far as story goes), their Jedi Master had left 2 months prior to get supplies from the larger settlement that is somewhere in the north (Again not exactly located for the party) as a result of this the group has access to a the Jedi's Holocron as a shared resource. There is, by all accounts, an Ancient Jedi Temple that has been lost to the ages and jungles that, from research that the Jedi Master hinted at, lies to the east. There is a ship (one of the players actually crashed it and in the aftermath of his crash and haze that was upon him while he stumbled through the jungle (can't actually quite remember where it was that he landed or how he got to where he is now, shock and all) all that is known is that the player stumbled into the village from the west. It is also known that there is an imperial base on the world but where that is exactly is not sure either. Food is running out. There's things around the village but the local gangs that are usually paid off by the Master have raided at least once (which the players fought off - this was the intro game and was designed to just get some of the mechanics down for all of us that are learning to play this game).

So what I am asking is

Are there any free resources for creatures or the likes?

Are there any random encounter tables that people use and wouldn't mind sharing?

Has anyone designed an ancient jedi temple and if so would you mind sharing? I've got something that I threw together on paper, just want to see if it's right or if there was anything else that was missing out of it (rooms and the like).

Can you think of any other things that might be on this world that would be good/entertaining to go through?

Really any other thoughts?

The idea is based around the whole Westmarches idea, The players are drawing the map, there are random tables for how things work. There can be dungeons as such and these can be revisited as different things arise, the temple may be overrun by wildlife first time around, 2nd time maybe the imperial forces have taken it and are mining the kyber crystals for their nefarious deeds or similar.

Cheers for ... well even reading this and thinking its a good idea! but any help on resources (Preferably free online ones - I've seen the cards, they look cool, I live in a town that it is hard to get these resources - I asked to order them in, they don't look to be coming any time soon, also looked online and they seem rare as hens teeth here in Australia) or ideas

Rey

I just want to address one thing you asked about (apologies for that), but it's important. And it's RE: Random encounter tables..

Just don't do it (random encounters).

Random encounters are a relic and a habit from games like D&D, where part of the whole "thing" was dungeons being great mysteries, and random loot and grinding xp from kills featuring into game design, and this general "war of attrition" mindset, that had to occur to winnow down PC Hitpoints and resources (potions and spells and thugs) before the PCs were "ready" to be stood up in front of the BBEG.

FFGs Star Wars is not that game. Many games are not that game these days, but especially not this one.

First of all, it's a storytelling and narrative-focused game. The analogue to random encounters here is Obligation and Morality. Story elements that are perhaps not directly related to the main plot you're following, but that are designed to further character depth, and can be woven into that main plot easily.

Second, combat is very lethal - and so is non-combat - there's no need to have any combat in this game that doesn't need to happen (and it often may only need to happen if the PCs decide there's no other way). Any combat is probably going to hurt the PCs in a significant way, so there is no war of attrition - every battle is a Big-Bad. But also, any Skill checks required outside of combat (Social encounters/challenges, Mechanical challenges, Physical challenges, Survival challenges, so on and so forth) all have the potential to do harm to the PCs thru the Strain mechanic. So again, a war of attrition thru combat is not necessary when anything can contribute to that attrition.

No. Random. Encounters. Let it all com from the players choices. Let it all serve a purpose for the story - not a belief that the PCs need to face X number of spawns before the BBEG.

8 hours ago, Reynastus said:

...but as I am not as invested in the lore as some of my players (I am more of the person who loves the setting, really enjoyed the movies, thinks the best was 5, but hasn't read any of the other fiction surrounding the setting)

I have the opposite situation, my players couldn't care less about Star Wars details, so it's pointless for me to drop references. But it works either way, just tell your players you're doing your own thing, make Felucia whatever you want it to be.

8 hours ago, Reynastus said:

Are there any free resources for creatures or the likes?

The most useful resource imho (other than the adversaries in the books) are the Adversary decks. If you had planned for the players to zig, and they zag instead (or introduce something via the narrative dice), the decks make it super simple to set up encounters on the fly...provided you have a handle on encounter scaling.

8 hours ago, Reynastus said:

The idea is based around the whole Westmarches idea, The players are drawing the map, there are random tables for how things work.

To echo emsquared, the random thing is more difficult to deal with in this game. D&D has fairly standard formulas for generating encounters that will give the party certain levels of challenge, but that's because everything in D&D runs in a straight-jacket. The PC classes are rigidly defined in terms of chances to hit and damage output. As well, combat generally lasts several turns, and because there are so many rolls, you can assume a statistically consistent outcome. However, in this game, PCs are far less predictable...you could have a Bounty Hunter who actually focusses on social skills to get things done, and lets their combat abilities suffer. Also, combat tends to run shorter (only a few turns at most) which means less predictability and wilder swings in outcome. So you can't really scale encounters generically, you have to base them on the party at your table at the time of the game.

So I would back up a bit and ask what is the actual story here? There are story elements focussed around mapping the terrain: find the ancient temple; find food sources; find the larger settlement; find the Imperial base. Is there a larger goal? What impact will encounters have on the overall situation? Eg: if you mess with the Imperials, will they come looking for you with a bigger force? Will they find the temple before the PCs? If you find food in one place, is it used up, does it recharge over time, or ...?

Once you define those things, you can more easily develop several "plug and play" encounters that can fit into whatever situation you need for the moment, and these encounters should have something about them that reveals a bigger picture or pushes the PCs toward some resolution. So if the PCs happen to be looking for food, then you can insert one of the food encounters (e.g.: "Found a dead bantha, but some nexu are protecting it", or "Found some fruit trees, but they are hallucinogenic"...); Etc. Each encounter then has an impact on the story as a whole.

Cheers for the input

So cllarifying a little bit more on the "story". The whole point of this game and the way I am trying to run it is that the GM is not telling a specific story. The players are in a situation and the story is how they are working to get out of the situation, it's their decision, their motivations, their calling the shots.

I've worked hard before on having story lines and plot arcs only for the players to go in completely different direction and have nothing planned for that.

I've told the players that the world itself is hostile, at this point in time they have no ability to get off world or traverse the world faster than "one hex per day". The idea being that to survive is the goal, my players are very experienced at RPGs (talking in the decades of playing, running, and in one case one of the triads for the greyhawk setting during 3.5 pretty sure it was) and if there is a way to bring cheese and bypass things or just breeze through things has become second nature to these people. Not saying that's a bad thing just saying I want to step it up somewhat. I want this game to be a challenge for them and the reason I like this system is because it can be a challenge for them in so many ways - Random encounters don't have to be combat as such, maybe while looking for the ancient temple the players stumbled across a big game hunters camp, maybe they stumbled across the big game and kill the hunters quarry, maybe they stumble across the hunter who has knowledge of where the temple is, or maybe he will decide that hunting humans is something he has wanted to do for some time but has never done anything with it, but random encounters based around plot arcs more than "here is land type A at CR2 a d100 score and blah turns up".

The "dungeons" as it were are where the real treasures lie - The Jedi Temple was actually a cover for a Kyber Crystal mine but it is unlikely that the players will find this out on first pass through the temple - It may be that they find hints that there is something there while looking but the idea of actually getting to that point is going to be very very difficult at earlier stages and so they will need to wait till they get more powerful, better abilities etc before taking on that section of the temple - or if they insist then well they die and roll up new characters and begin at another such settlement not too far away (may be another world, may not may just be other people from the "Village" they are in. The story hasn't changed and its a persistent galaxy and their mapped areas become known through brief conversations with others or through the holocron or some other means of communicating whats happened (the guy that did the whole westmarches campaign originally said the PC's were carving the map into a table at the inn in Westmarches).

So @WhaFrog thanks for the inspiration for those things - the whole "random encounter table" doesn't have to be always combat oriented and this is what I was after - Ideas around those plot points that are associated to for me to work with as a general introduction to the world.

Once again - Just reinforcing here = I am not telling the story - I am not drawing out the map of the world (I have a basic idea of the general layout but I have nothing on paper) - The players are telling me the story and it's their goals. I have a few plot arcs (get a ship fixed, get kyber crystals to make lightsabres, get food, survive harsh environment) but the way in which this happens is largely up to the players - Once they get the ship fixed - where they go is up to them. They may after all decide that the whole temple searching idea is just not worth it and ignore it completely. If they do - No point doing much with that then - if they don't and want to go there more than once, then each time it'll be different. The general layout will be the same but whats inside changes and develops (maybe the big game hunter if they haven't come across him yet has set up camp inside the temple somewhere and the players may very well come across him or his camp, how they react to him or his camp will decide what or how he reacts rather than straight up being hostile and being the big bad boss from the get go giving the players the opportunity to make the encounter a social one rather than combat one but that's the players choice not mine as the GM)

The reason I wanted tables or similar was so that I too could play at some point - Here's a framework of the world we are in - fred your the GM tonight - it's then assumed that Fred's character is helping out the local populace with some chore or another and the group decides what we will be doing that night giving me a chance to play - So eventually each play session will have a different GM, the notes that are made make up the story and everyone gets to be GM, everyone gets to play its all a win win.

Thanks for reading and thanks for the input as well

Rey

also just looked at the decks.... Was going to cost in the order of $20USD (about $30AUD for me) to post to ship from FF's website. Can't find the decks anywhere else. Yes I am sure they are nice but I just can't justify nearly $50 on a single deck

So it's a more sandbox approach. This might seem like heresy, but it might not be a bad idea to get the D&D Dungeon Master's Guide. All the tables you could ever want for random encounters are in there...wilderness, city, etc, plus plenty more for random dungeon/temple building. If you strip away its D&D-ness, it's a really good resource. Obviously you'd have to translate them to Star Wars, but it can't be that hard: pack of orcs = squad of stormtroopers, etc.

Too bad about the cost of those decks, that's ridiculous.

I can't point you to free resources on temple maps and the like, but I'm a big fan of sites like DriveThruRPG.com. There are a ton of profession and fan-made maps, adventures, and other resources. There are some really good ones for $5, and plenty more that are "pay what you want".

Actually I just saw this thread, might be some useful links in there:

Would just like to point out that a sandbox campaign doesn't mean a random campaign. Really I'd argue that a hex/dungeon-crawl campaign is not a sandbox campaign - it's a hex/dungeoncrawl campaign, but if that's your intent, I guess there's no reason you can't give xp for overcoming random encounters...

Anyway, good luck with your campaign.

6 hours ago, whafrog said:

Actually I just saw this thread, might be some useful links in there:

This is the kind of resource I was after - Thanks heaps for pointing me in this direction.

5 hours ago, emsquared said:

Would just like to point out that a sandbox campaign doesn't mean a random campaign. Really I'd argue that a hex/dungeon-crawl campaign is not a sandbox campaign - it's a hex/dungeoncrawl campaign, but if that's your intent, I guess there's no reason you can't give xp for overcoming random encounters...

Anyway, good luck with your campaign.

Thanks for your input. The encounter thing could also be adventure seeds by another name. Could also be something as simple as "You Got Lost!" or the jungle around you gets extremely thick at this point or maybe theres some spore releasing mushrooms etc not always an adversary. It'll be up to the GM of the night to decide how the things act or what happens to the group and some of these tables will not have any combat at all. The group may be travelling towards the ancient Jedi Temple but on their fourth day of traversing through thick jungle they come across the carcass of a large flyiing ripper that looks like it has just been killed (the how where and why of how it's been killed is up to whoever is running that night).

We shall see how it goes though.

If you have a Windows machine, @OggDude 's character software is an incredible resource.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/89135-another-character-generator/