Hi all. This might be stupid, but after having people bail on trying out the EotE Beginner Game I picked up (along with the core rulebook) I finally found a captive audience: my students. Some of them actually asked about a roleplaying game and are excited to try it out, but there's one problem, I'm going to run it, but 5 students want to play. So is there any reason I'm missing why I couldn't just add an extra Gamorrean or droid to various encounters? I also picked up the Age of Rebellion starter, thinking maybe one of those characters could have been captured by Teemo so that everyone would have an equally nifty character to start with and then they could decide if they wanted to smuggle or rebel once they get off Tatooine. (Or I suppose one of the guys from EotE could join the Rebellion if they want to do that adventure instead. I imagine adding in force users from the other one would get kind of messy and weird.) Does this sound like something that would work and are there any hidden pitfalls I'm missing? Do the different sections of the game, specifically EotE and AoR work as well together as they claim? I haven't done this sort of thing before. Thanks!
Edited by PenguinBonaparteNewbie GM Question: 5 PCs?
I'm in the exact same boat, except their friends not students. I've found mixing both games works fine. I would play the RotE story, but let it be a little looser. Currently Pash has been captured by Imperials after a failed attempt to shoot up Space Port Control, and the Wookiee has been Shanghaied by the Rebels! If there's any problem with this number of players I don't know what it is?
There are two additional EotE Beginner PCs available online here, under Player Resources:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-beginner-game/
Here are the characters:
Nothing wrong with mixing some in from the other beginner sets, though. All except TFA have additional characters online, under their respective Player Resources headings, and they all have follow-up adventures. The one for EotE is: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/80/93/80935c12-24ac-442b-b423-687d4e28ae89/long_arm_of_the_hutt_lr.pdf
Edited by EdgehawkThe only potential issue is that more players means each gets less focus time at the table. Depending on your players, this may or may not be an issue.
I personally set a hard limit of no more than five players for this game, but I've gone as high as seven for D&D, and I've capped lower in games more focused on characters' internal struggles (which could include a dedicated FaD game).
Edited by HappyDazeAutocorrect sucks.
Awesome, thank you all, this helps a lot. They're funny kids and we're in no big rush, doing this over lunch, so no issue about interaction time. Just want the game to still be fun and not trivial. So another Gamorrean, maybe a third guard droid at the spaceport, and then make the boss Trandoshan at the end take a few more wounds but keep the same damage output?
Edited by PenguinBonaparteAlso, playing with 4-6 is about ideal for most.
2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:The only potential issue is that more players means each gets less focus time at the table. Depending on your players, this may or may not be an issue.
I personally set a hard limit of no more than five players for this game, but I've gone as high as seven for D&D, and I've capped lower in games more focused on characters' internal struggles (which could include a dedicated FaD game).
When I GM im more comfortable with 4, happy though with 5, will play with 6 , but eith 6 it has a double edged sword , when playing the normal game, in the time I have to play, you can see by thw end of it some boredom set in on some players waiting their turn.
3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:The only potential issue is that more players means each gets less focus time at the table. Depending on your players, this may or may not be an issue.
I personally set a hard limit of no more than five players for this game, but I've gone as high as seven for D&D, and I've capped lower in games more focused on characters' internal struggles (which could include a dedicated FaD game).
Piker. I ran D&D in college in an open, will have as many players as the room will fit game, and it was a blast. I will admit, it got rather crazy when I had 17 players one time. Usually I had about 8. When you get more than 6, they tend to fragment into multiple sub-parties. I do prefer having 5-6 players now. I like the ability to have 1-2 people miss a game, and not be missing half the party.
I'm fairly sure I'd be bored playing in a game with that many people, so I have no interest in inflicting it on others.
- Yeah, the whole force-user stuff gets messy. New rules, and the like.
- Tapping into student knowledge is good. Do things they know. Hutts, the Empire, etc...
- Maybe have a Session Zero for making characters. Or, have pre-made ones and let them pick from a wide variety: wookie, gamorrean, jawa, Rodian, Mon-Cal, and various humans. Pregens let you hit the ground running. Learn on the fly.
- Some of the order of initiative can slow things down. 5 PC's and 3-4 NPC's makes for a long order. Maybe consider group initiative. They go, We go.
- A homemade adaptation of those starter sets might run better than you having to refer to a book over and over to 'get things right'. Make a small outline of where you want things to go an have fun.
Thanks, that's a good idea about the group initiative. So far they seem to like the fancy artwork on the character sheets, so I think they'll go with that. The Hutt escape will draw on stuff from the original movies and a couple of them I think know a lot about Star Wars. One girl is always wearing Star Wars shirts and one student has apparently run D&D campaigns, so he can probably give me pointers if something gets weird. They'll probably try some strange stuff but seems like I can always refer everything back to their basic stats pretty easily.
Also, anything in particular I should look up if they just happen to be followed around by a lonely little dewback?
The sweet spot for me is four players. Three players works, and five isn't too unwieldy. Six is pushing it, as at that point a player will have to wait several minutes between turns in combat and perhaps longer during general adventuring. This is particularly an issue when playing online (as our group does).
On 9/3/2017 at 4:02 PM, PenguinBonaparte said:Also, anything in particular I should look up if they just happen to be followed around by a lonely little dewback?
Check out Stoogoff , a site that I have found extremely useful.
Honestly, I don't think that you really need more than 5 PC's. I GM a game with that number and if you don't know your players' styles yet, or they haven't played before it can be better to have less characters than more.
Just my two cents.
On 9/1/2017 at 10:19 PM, syrath said:When I GM im more comfortable with 4, happy though with 5, will play with 6 , but eith 6 it has a double edged sword , when playing the normal game, in the time I have to play, you can see by thw end of it some boredom set in on some players waiting their turn.
I have had this issue before, too!