So I’ve been acting as GM for my group for a short while, and I’m having a bit of trouble with the improvisation, which surprised me since improv is pretty much all you do as a player.

ive tried to make a detailed plan of attack that could make it possible to anticipate what the characters will do but I’ve found that that is impossible, so for now I’m just creating many vague locations with both story and generic npcs to draw from since my largest hurdle has been having the appropriate npc for a space, and I’m hoping that this could solve the majority of my issue but I’m also eager to hear any solutions that the GMs of this forum might have.

Have a select list of NPCs that may be encountered on-hand. Tweak their stats and equipment as needed.

Use the Environmental Set Pieces or other suggestions in the books on using Threats/Adv.

Ensure that the PCs have a good reason to be involved with what they're doing and keep objectives very clear. My group was supposed to be undercover weapons dealers and that turned into a night of crafting and shopping, we forgot why we were posing as dealers.

A short list of useful tomes, available cheaply as PDFs from places like DriveThruRPG:

• Never Unprepared
• Play Unsafe
• The Lazy Dungeon Master
• Unframed - the Art of Improvization for Game Masters

Really the main thing is knowing your NPCs, why they exist and do what they do. For myself, if I have to invent NPCs on the fly, one of the most useful tools is a set of percentile dice. If the players zig when I expected zag, I can ask myself questions, like, "Is the merchant in a bad mood or good", "Are the PCs heading towards a bad area of town or is it upscale". Usually only a couple of "answers" are needed before the ball starts rolling of its own accord. Eg: I roll a 10 on the merchant's mood, but I need a reason why: family matters or financial? Another roll gives me "family matters", and by then I'm already deciding it's his kid who's fallen in a bad crowd, and that crowd is in the back room *right now* and...off we go.

One other improv tool I use is Rory's Story Cubes. Grab any three and roll them, and perhaps the symbols will generate ideas on the spot. This has worked for me about 2/3rd of the time, and when it does work it's usually beyond my expectations. The percentile dice never fail me, but I'm rarely wowed by the result. The difference might be that the story cubes inject ideas I didn't expect, which I might not know how to handle; whereas with the percentile dice I'm already asking questions that limit the scope of the outcome.

Anyway, experiment with different tools, and find what works best for you. And don't be afraid to admit to your players what you're doing and that you're working on it, they'll probably cut you more slack.

The key to comfort in improvisation, for me, is to be familiar with my setting. Not a passing familiarity, but a true in-depth knowledge. Keeping up with the new canon has granted me a lot of insight into how the Star Wars universe works.

I highly recommend all the books @whafrog suggests as well, with Play Unsafe being the one that really changed my mind about how I GM. I also highly encourage @lukey84's suggestion of generic locales and characters that you can drop into a scene lacking only descriptions and personalities. This is the stuff I spend prep time on.

Finally, this is a collaborative game, and the GM shouldn't be the sole source of inspiration. Including players to set scenes, contribute NPC attributes - or even run them if they're not in the scene, are great ways to share the improvisational burden. There's a certain refreshing freedom in knowing that everyone is winging it and having a good time.

I'll put in a plug for the FFG adversary decks. Whole stack of generic NPCs with stats, skills, gear, and abilities right on the card. Since they are generic you can use the "street tough" for both the Corellian swoop ganger and the nightclub bouncer, just change the name.

Also, in a side bar in one of the books* there is a blurb "Help I don't know its stats" it essentially says when creating stats on the fly just assume everyone has a 2 in all stats, 1 rank in any relevant skills, and 8 wounds.

*Free pdf download - Long Arm of the Hutt, page 30.

21 hours ago, Lukey84 said:

Have a select list of NPCs that may be encountered on-hand. Tweak their stats and equipment as needed.

This is what i've been endeavoring to do, craft the npcs more than the encounter itself, be aware of what might happen and have potential npcs to fill those slots, it is difficult but i agree this is probably the best rout to take, i'm even bringing homages to past npcs and actual past npcs that i can expand on.

18 hours ago, ThreeAM said:

I'll put in a plug for the FFG adversary decks. Whole stack of generic NPCs with stats, skills, gear, and abilities right on the card. Since they are generic you can use the "street tough" for both the Corellian swoop ganger and the nightclub bouncer, just change the name.

Also, in a side bar in one of the books* there is a blurb "Help I don't know its stats" it essentially says when creating stats on the fly just assume everyone has a 2 in all stats, 1 rank in any relevant skills, and 8 wounds.

*Free pdf download - Long Arm of the Hutt, page 30.

i agree, the adversary decks are amazing and our old gm used to have a few on hand but has since lost them, im planning on getting my own but for now im using a fan made set of adversary cards as well as the merchant generator designed by @_Thriven_ (also i'll check out that thing form long arm of the hutt)

21 hours ago, Lukey84 said:

Use the Environmental Set Pieces or other suggestions in the books on using Threats/Adv.

Ensure that the PCs have a good reason to be involved with what they're doing and keep objectives very clear. My group was supposed to be undercover weapons dealers and that turned into a night of crafting and shopping, we forgot why we were posing as dealers.

yea, i've been doing that, luckily im using the black sun rising and under a black sun books for our next adventure and they have loads of those in the books.

as for characters motivation, this is an easy one for me actually as a all of our characters are really good at developing their backstory, and since my main npc on the crew used to be a character they also contribute to the motivation. Right now we are running with the bit of cliche, i'm sure, starter that the empire has framed us for the destruction of the death star so as to divert attention from the effectiveness of the rebels, because being betrayed by one of your bounty hunter teams sounds better than the faction trying to destroy your government. the pykes are blackmailing us, having boarded our ship without our knowledge and altering our astrogation equipment in order to send us to coruscant while providing us with false documentation in order to get on the planet. if we don't accept thier "job offer" they will remotely disable our false transponder signal and report our whereabouts to the empire.

the next one is even easier as it takes place on mandalore and is the primary reason why i took over as GM. before my character was an npc their backstory revolved around working for the empire solely as a means of gaining early access to newly found force sensitive children in order to capture them first and hide them for their protection, one of them happened to be our former GM's character's son. currently they are hidden amongst the clans of the true mandalorians on mandalore, disguising them as adopted children, where they are being protected by my former character's adoptive dads and their friends and family, but vader has for some reason paid a visit to the planet and had made the characters nervous about the children's continued safety, providing a sense of urgency and inconvenience to the black sun module.

21 hours ago, whafrog said:

A short list of useful tomes, available cheaply as PDFs from places like DriveThruRPG:

• Never Unprepared
• Play Unsafe
• The Lazy Dungeon Master
• Unframed - the Art of Improvization for Game Masters

Really the main thing is knowing your NPCs, why they exist and do what they do. For myself, if I have to invent NPCs on the fly, one of the most useful tools is a set of percentile dice. If the players zig when I expected zag, I can ask myself questions, like, "Is the merchant in a bad mood or good", "Are the PCs heading towards a bad area of town or is it upscale". Usually only a couple of "answers" are needed before the ball starts rolling of its own accord. Eg: I roll a 10 on the merchant's mood, but I need a reason why: family matters or financial? Another roll gives me "family matters", and by then I'm already deciding it's his kid who's fallen in a bad crowd, and that crowd is in the back room *right now* and...off we go.

One other improv tool I use is Rory's Story Cubes. Grab any three and roll them, and perhaps the symbols will generate ideas on the spot. This has worked for me about 2/3rd of the time, and when it does work it's usually beyond my expectations. The percentile dice never fail me, but I'm rarely wowed by the result. The difference might be that the story cubes inject ideas I didn't expect, which I might not know how to handle; whereas with the percentile dice I'm already asking questions that limit the scope of the outcome.

Anyway, experiment with different tools, and find what works best for you. And don't be afraid to admit to your players what you're doing and that you're working on it, they'll probably cut you more slack.

these are all wonderful resources, i've looked them up and im very appreciative for the suggestions and will likely get all of them. the dice in particular seem very interesting, i recall wanting to get some at some point in the past just because they looked interesting and i can really see how they would aid in getting the ball rolling on creative thought.

19 hours ago, themensch said:

The key to comfort in improvisation, for me, is to be familiar with my setting. Not a passing familiarity, but a true in-depth knowledge. Keeping up with the new canon has granted me a lot of insight into how the Star Wars universe works.

I highly recommend all the books @whafrog suggests as well, with Play Unsafe being the one that really changed my mind about how I GM. I also highly encourage @lukey84's suggestion of generic locales and characters that you can drop into a scene lacking only descriptions and personalities. This is the stuff I spend prep time on.

i unfortunately have not been keeping up as much with the new canon as i'm very much a fan of the old canon, but this is really important as the new canon is where the game lines are likely going to be going down in the future with the legends acting as an idea mine for the new. luckily i've seen all the rebels and clone wars so i don't got too much to catch up on other than the books that have come out since, although i'll probably go to some trouble to preserve mandalorians a bit as they are my favorites lol.

since you and warfrog both recomend play unsafe i think that will be the first one i get, which shouldn't be too cost prohibitive as compared to getting them all at once. and yes this is also what i spend my time on in particular, especially in a situation like our next adventure on coruscant, i just know these guys are going to do something like "lets go visit the jedi temple" so im adding a lot of locals to the base module on the off chance that they might want to go there.

19 hours ago, themensch said:

Finally, this is a collaborative game, and the GM shouldn't be the sole source of inspiration. Including players to set scenes, contribute NPC attributes - or even run them if they're not in the scene, are great ways to share the improvisational burden. There's a certain refreshing freedom in knowing that everyone is winging it and having a good time.

oh this is a very interesting thought, i am definitely going to use this and see how it works.