So I had originally bought a graph paper composition book to put my sessions into. Each encounter was taking about a single sheet, front and back. I'd copy NPC stats into my graph paper. So I could easily reference them without having to look them up in a book. I'd tailor encounters greatly to add a challenge to my players who are getting too powerful. In the end, I'd spend days writing about 12-15 pages and in the end I felt unprepared every time. My players like a big world. They like a lot of the world defined. They love when they can go off trail and I've prepared something for that. I don't mind preparing it, I just couldn't do it in a reasonable time frame (even playing every other week) on paper.

I made the Merchant Generator and that helped accelerate the process of NPC creation. I made some enhancements to it since I started writing the last session. I have a few more enhancements I'm planning as I'm writing my next session.

I was thinking to myself though before I started this last session. "Am I cheating if I'm using visual aids?"

I was seriously worried about that one. I'm a new GM, period. Not just to EotE but to GMing. I don't mind creating a picture with words. I actually writing a lot per scene that I speak but I wasn't sure if I was going to be skewing my players imagination or giving them a base to work off of. I suck at reading my own hand writing. I suck at reading my own typing. I find myself looking at my notes, reading it and then interpreting what I wrote into my own words again because it feels like someone else wrote them originally.

So, it dawned on me. Why not use Visual Aids and power point? I can keep track of my sessions digitally and project per encounter a slide for my players to see. I can copy/paste information from the online resources and google images to create this robust world. Now I posted this to a GM discord and just got reamed before I even did the session and I thought to myself... "eh **** em". So where is what I did:

So as the GM I set my laptop up behind the GM's divider (still super handy and pointed the external monitor towards my players)

Computer setup (Used display port to hdmi but the setup is the same)

I first used the following crawl to open the scene https://brorlandi.github.io/StarWarsIntroCreator/

From inside Power point I could navigate to any scene "adding sections" allows you to break up portions of the session that are not linear. My players actually arrived at Bilbousa, left Bilbousa, completed an objective, returned to Bilbousa (reusing the Spaceport slide), and then ended up in jail in Bilbousa trying to pull a fast one on the local hutt.

Opening Scene Player View

Opening Scene GM View

Using PowerPoint, I can see the next upcoming slide to ensure I don't just hop into the wrong portion of the session.

Merchant found in the Bilbousa Bazaar . Now I told them ,"I'm generating the merchant and just pasting them into the PP. What's on there is on there. If you gotta problem with it, I'll update the merchant generator." My players really liked the ROG feel and equipment of Merchant generator.

They were sent off by the Hutt to kill off a local militia group for initiating and succeeding in the death of a hutt they were framed for. The militia is holed up in abandoned ruins a while outside the city which was information my group brought to another hutt. They fly out to land at the ruins . They encounter some beasts on the way in (thanks to this forum) and make their way into the ruins and further explorer (1) (2) till they come across a particular fountain in which the archaeologist force sensitive feels drawn to it and uses the force to trigger a door hatch leading to a 9,000 yearold Sith Ship as they explore the ship that hasn't seen people in many millennia they encounter the the ships logs which reads how the previous owners left the ship where it is . I used power point to read off the text. It had nothing to do with the actual session but did hint them to their next destination and the slow scrolling of the power point animation left the suspense lingering.

My players were like "DUDE that was awesome!"

I thought you guys might appreciate it.

I would love to do more improvisation but I feel like I'm always going to step on Star Wars canon so anywhere I go, I research the heck out of wikipedia pages on the place.

Sounds awesome to me! As both a player and a GM I always appreciate the effort a GM puts into running the game. This is honestly is above and beyond my expectations. I am saving this post as inspiration and am I going to dig out an old monitor and try this right now!

You've definitely got the immersion factor cranked to 11. All you'd need would be to have an aromatic mister spraying Nexxu musk (or somesuch) and some sultry sounds of Max Reebo playing in the background and you'd have it all.

Good job and great work on the research. As for the improv and stepping on canon. My advice is not to worry. For me, bending the rules of the universe to the story you're telling is more important than worshiping at the altar of Canonicity. I'd rather tell a tale set in the star wars universe coloured by the lens of my players choices and events than be limited to things as they are. (Who really knows if Han or Greedo shot first. None of my player's characters were there and therefore I can blur the truth to suit my game. My players may know what the Truth is but that is irrelevant metagaming to us. Your mileage may vary and your players may need the rigidity the canon provides however so get their feedback. Go with what suits your players and your game. Ultimately though, the goal is to have fun.

I do similarly, but with a projector and a few different tools. If my plans work out, I'll actually be projecting down onto the gaming table instead of a screen!

I know this game is Theatre of the Mind™ but sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, and I've had players use little details from the pictures & maps to enhance the story. Having tons of saved maps and images that I can bring up quickly makes it easy to match the player's zigs when I expected a zag. Having generic set pieces and NPCs means I am prepared for almost any encounter.

Another helpful change I implemented regarding improvisation and reading material was to cut it down to the bare essentials in a bullet-pointed list. I rarely if ever read text right off the page, and having a concise list of details allows me to quickly read them and act on them without having to stop the action.

Finally - knowing canon is the best way to avoid stepping on it. While many decry the relegation of the EU to "legends" status, it does make it a lot easier for the new SWRPG GM to pick up and maintain a reasonable hold on canon material, but I will confess it's a part-time job sometimes. However, it's just a game and table canon beats movie canon for all but the most pedantic players.

Visual aids are not cheating. At all. They can be a lot of work, though you seem to have this pretty well worked out. I couldn't pull it off, I tend to make do with music and a bunch of pics loaded onto an iPad. Even that much helps a lot. For one thing, your players will remember your NPCs much more easily if there's a good picture to go with the name.

When I play in person I use my very large SW action figure collection for visual aids. I pick out a figure for every character and use them as miniatures during combat.

8 hours ago, themensch said:

I do similarly, but with a projector and a few different tools. If my plans work out, I'll actually be projecting down onto the gaming table instead of a screen!

Heh, I really like that idea. With a dungeon tiler you could do some cool stuff.

Visual aids help a lot. I have a similarish setup going on with my Roll20 games. Wish Roll20 did custom fonts, having the Star Wars font for the location names really ties it together nicely.

http://i.imgur.com/IuI5yy3.jpg

I feel so remiss, I use almost no visual aids (maybe images googled...). Then again, it only takes about 1/2 hour to prep a session...hmm...

12 hours ago, _Thriven_ said:

Heh, I really like that idea. With a dungeon tiler you could do some cool stuff.

That's the plan! We'll see if my old vga projector is bright enough for the task. I've seen this done before at small cons and I've seen a couple different clunky contraptions used, but I have a particularly interesting setup to get around that.

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

I feel so remiss, I use almost no visual aids (maybe images googled...). Then again, it only takes about 1/2 hour to prep a session...hmm...

My second session of Edge of the Empire I had like 7 encounters over about 15 pages of text in my book. 5 of them could be done in any order and performing them in different orders caused a series of events to unfold differently.

I also wrote a ton of flash cards with text pre-game. I'd pass information from one NPC to a PC through a whisper and would hand them a card with text on it. If I expected a reply, the wrote on it and handed it back. I was forcing the players to work against themselves due to their obligation types. So at one point they were all sitting in a cantina and a pretty Twilek jumps in our Twilek Technicians lap and tells him ,"You're little baby Jedi isn't hiding that light saber from anyone. Meet me at the armory outside later, we'll split the reward and it will be just you and me." He was like ,"Alright, I'll see you there." Ultimately the plan failed but he covered his *** and the NPC took the fall and he was like ,"Well that was my plan the entire time." That player would have totally sold out the other PC in a heart beat, just to see what would happen.

I want to move in the direction to where I can just throw up my hands and be like "I have an entire page written for the night." I really want to go to a player driven narrative. Where they tell me where they want to go always and we are off rails the entire time. I'm just so scared honestly.

3 hours ago, _Thriven_ said:

I want to move in the direction to where I can just throw up my hands and be like "I have an entire page written for the night." I really want to go to a player driven narrative. Where they tell me where they want to go always and we are off rails the entire time. I'm just so scared honestly.

You can get there, and I agree it's scary to tread that path initially. You can't just throw the PCs into a sandbox and expect magic to happen; conflict comes from the GM.

What has worked for me is mining PC backgrounds and past sessions to add to ongoing stories - the galaxy doesn't just take place in the room with the PCs, and what they do (or don't do!) can have rippling effects far afield. I've had great luck adapting Dungeon World's "Fronts" and I'll usually have 2-3 going at any one time. Too few and it's railroady, too many and it's option paralysis. There might be 50 plots in the works, but never all in the forefront at once - what a great use for Obligation rolls. So, I'll have one story that I want to tell and tack on a couple others that are results of PC influence, figure out what critical plot points are bound to happen, and how the PCs can change it. This is a bullet-point list because you betcha it'll change often, maybe even mid-session! So, I have this living galaxy where things happen with or without the PCs interacting. I like to call it a "clockwork sandbox" but someone likely coined a better term for it long ago. There is a lot of player agency but the GM still has some control over the direction of the story wherein prep can be accomplished. There will always be the curve ball, in fact, it's probably the norm - but leveraging a prep-light prep-for-anything mindset will not only accomplish the goals of handing narrative control over to the players, it will build confidence for when things do go off the rails.

On 8/1/2017 at 1:30 PM, themensch said:

I do similarly, but with a projector and a few different tools. If my plans work out, I'll actually be projecting down onto the gaming table instead of a screen!

I've got an extra TV that I purchased from a friend's sister on the cheap. I lay it flat on the table and connect the laptop to it. On that second screen, I run a crawl, and have pictures of NPC's, some locations, etc. all open but minimized to show when appropriate. A galaxy map or a map of a location that the characters are in occasionally gets tossed up there for reference, too. And with the TV laying flat, it's easy to use custom round tokens similar to the ones in the Beginner Games to get an idea of where everyone is in that scene without it seeming fully tactical (which I find actual mini's tends to do).

Meanwhile, my father-in-law, who does woodworking, has plans for a gaming table that I was linked to from here over a year ago, and is working on it between actual paying jobs; it includes an inset to mount the TV in the table.

Visual aids and backing music go a long way. I like the idea of a screen - may have to dig out a spare screen myself if I can.

Quote

What has worked for me is mining PC backgrounds and past sessions to add to ongoing stories - the galaxy doesn't just take place in the room with the PCs, and what they do (or don't do!) can have rippling effects far afield. I've had great luck adapting Dungeon World's "Fronts" and I'll usually have 2-3 going at any one time. Too few and it's railroady, too many and it's option paralysis. There might be 50 plots in the works, but never all in the forefront at once - what a great use for Obligation rolls.

Definitely. One of my favourite things in an RPG campaign was a Babylon 5 campaign written by Mongoose, which was essentially the 'what-was-going-to-be-the-plot-of-Crusade-before-it-got-canned' from the series notes, one thing that helped a lot with the setting was the Universe Today newspaper pages that accompanied each 'episode'; some of the stories irrelevant, some interesting, some - initially irrelevant but you find yourself blundering into as the campaign goes on.

I just wanted to post an update: I have now run Two sessions using the same setup that @_Thriven_ described (monitor hooked up to laptop and power point presentation.)

I must say that this has been my greatest success in GM'ing I have ever had. It has gone over better than I had ever hoped; everyone loves it! It also has really helped out the one player in my group that knows very little Star Wars, "What the **** is an Aluminum falcon?" boom, picture.

Above all I must admit that I personally am having a blast putting together each session by finding appropriate pictures and even throwing in few fancy star wipes and what not. I was even able to embed a Jurassic Park T-rex chase gif for their escape chase from a Predatory Lylek.

Overall it is working out incredibly well, though once I finish running this pre-made campaign I'll have to describe stuff more on the fly without pre-planned pictures, but I'm less concerned now that I have got a whole stock of images that I can use in a pinch.

Again I can't thank @_Thriven_ enough!

On 8/10/2017 at 9:25 PM, ThreeAM said:

I just wanted to post an update: I have now run Two sessions using the same setup that @_Thriven_ described (monitor hooked up to laptop and power point presentation.)

I must say that this has been my greatest success in GM'ing I have ever had. It has gone over better than I had ever hoped; everyone loves it! It also has really helped out the one player in my group that knows very little Star Wars, "What the **** is an Aluminum falcon?" boom, picture.

Above all I must admit that I personally am having a blast putting together each session by finding appropriate pictures and even throwing in few fancy star wipes and what not. I was even able to embed a Jurassic Park T-rex chase gif for their escape chase from a Predatory Lylek.

Overall it is working out incredibly well, though once I finish running this pre-made campaign I'll have to describe stuff more on the fly without pre-planned pictures, but I'm less concerned now that I have got a whole stock of images that I can use in a pinch.

Again I can't thank @_Thriven_ enough!

That's awesome to hear man!

I am actually building a massive library of pictures that I have been finding from all sorts of sources. I'll pm you a link to my one drive folder.

@_Thriven_ Just wanted to follow up with a question. I noticed in one of your images from your presentation http://i.imgur.com/L3Vvv4W.png that you have Diamond symbols in your font. Is that just the standard wingdings symbol? and are you able to make a symbol for Hexagonal prof or challenge dice?

10 hours ago, ThreeAM said:

@_Thriven_ Just wanted to follow up with a question. I noticed in one of your images from your presentation http://i.imgur.com/L3Vvv4W.png that you have Diamond symbols in your font. Is that just the standard wingdings symbol? and are you able to make a symbol for Hexagonal prof or challenge dice?

Would you like a more thematic font?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vhihmkb0jsipdtw/EotESymbol-Regular-PLUS.otf?dl=0

I am not the creator, and of course this isn't official from FFG. I've rehosted it since I added the combined Light/Dark side pip but I'll be the first to admit I'm not font artist.

11 hours ago, ThreeAM said:

@_Thriven_ Just wanted to follow up with a question. I noticed in one of your images from your presentation http://i.imgur.com/L3Vvv4W.png that you have Diamond symbols in your font. Is that just the standard wingdings symbol? and are you able to make a symbol for Hexagonal prof or challenge dice?

Those are wingdings. Unfortunately the "notes" portion of powerpoint is a fixed font unless you use the "Insert Symbol" method

@_Thriven_ I would also appreciate the link if you don't mind!

I'm soon to be running my own games and I love the idea of giving my players solid visual cues to what is happening and what they are seeing to help with the immersion!

I also like to create gaming aids to enhance the gameplay. Stuff like this is pretty cool.

They hacked an old R2 unit and found this SOS message from the Sa Nalaor
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ukk7g8bc0uxsas4/Sa Nalaor message pod complete.mp3?dl=0

And here is a mission board I created in Powerpoint
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m85dnqrns7jbfez/mission board 16-9.pptx?dl=0

When I finally get my session summaries written up and posted on mySWRPG.com, for one in particular, I plan to include—

—The half dozen or so images doctored to provide different quality of a hologram message the players found.

—The half dozen or so recordings that I had a friend make, then digitally altered to represent different levels of playback quality.

The quality of each was determined by the results of the mechanics and computers checks made to rebuild and reboot the droid the message was found in.