My pcs are exploring the forests of Mon Eron (desiduous forest). So far they have gone diving for gems in a pool (which their NPC tactician did not approve of), scalping a cliff, and encountering a Bearsloth in a cave. They still have a day and a half till they reach valley they are trying to reach, and another half day till they discover an imperial mining operation there. This is my first time GMing and playing an RPG for that matter. Any suggestions for what I could do? Maybe a pair of Bearsloth, but that would probably be better after the imperials I'm thinking.

I am not too clear for what you are asking. Random encounters?

Yeah what encounters do you have while exploring forests?

very much depends on the world you are on (environment, fauna). I would just dig into this on wookiepedia perhaps and ideas will come up.

perhaps there were some historic battles there and PCs may stumble upon some old ruins/battlefield or even surviving settlers.

if the force (especially dark side) is strong in that place, you can throw all sorts of beasts behaving unusually at the PCs or prehaps agressive hunters who would set some traps on the PCs.

if you are going with beasts, think of somehting with a fun/unique abilities that can offer interesting in-game mechanics (like that arboreal octopus from BtR or those huge birds using force to draw the prey closer from Nexus of Power).

How much time/session(s) are you looking to burn?

A crash site.

Abandoned facility of some kind.

Depends, what are they there for? What is the imperials objective within this section of space? Are they alliance operatives? are they freelancers looking for a quick buck e.c.t. Motivation provides the source of challenge.

If they're around for more than a day they need to find shelter for the night. For example, a successful survival check with threat could mean they find a cave to sleep in, but realize too late that something already lives in there.

Depending on why they are there, you could try to integrate something that foreshadows the oncoming events, or some kind of information that helps them in a future encounter (maybe they find tracks of mining vehicles).

Also, if those few days are just filler, I'd consider just skipping past them if there is nothing important on the way. Maybe a single survival, resilience or athletics check to determine if they can shave half a day off of the travel time and how exerted they are when they reach their destination.

14 hours ago, Felswrath said:

Yeah what encounters do you have while exploring forests?

Poison Ivy! Make Resilience checks if they get too far in the bushes. Failure means +1 SB to all checks for a week.

Also, what Klort said. Plus, it could rain if their survival check to find shelter fails. Without proper rest due to rain, they'd make Resilience check to endure the fatigue.

18 hours ago, Klort said:

Also, if those few days are just filler, I'd consider just skipping past them if there is nothing important on the way. Maybe a single survival, resilience or athletics check to determine if they can shave half a day off of the travel time and how exerted they are when they reach their destination.

Important point. You don't have to chronicle every hour. Encounters and events should push the story forward, if there is no more story, then have a montage scene and move on.

Lets see.

The last 10 times that I was in the woods I encountered . . . nothing. I could probably go back 20 - 30 visits and report the same.

Most fauna understand to give apex predators a very very wide berth.

So unless there's a plot driven reason to have an encounter, I'd echo Whafrog's advise, "Bird chirp, squirrels chitter, but it's otherwise a quiet relaxing day, until it starts raining . . ."

Maybe a small village of local folk of some kind, sentients that will welcome the characters and maybe give them intel on the mining operation. You could also have them find an old ruin/wreck that could be used as a retreat that the characters could rally at if things go bad at the mining facility. Maybe there is a an ancient, but nearly functional, weapon in the ruin that they could use.

Second Whafrog 100%. Don't feel like you have to throw random encounters at them. In fact, avoid random encounters at all costs. Every encounter should be directly related to the overall storyline, so if all that is needed is for them to reach the next location, say something like this: "You pass a fitful night in the forest, surrounded by the croaks of some unknown species. The next morning, after a hasty breakfast, you pack up your things and make your way to the city of blah blah blah..."

On 10/28/2017 at 10:47 PM, DurosSpacer said:

Poison Ivy! Make Resilience checks if they get too far in the bushes. Failure means +1 SB to all checks for a week.

Also, what Klort said. Plus, it could rain if their survival check to find shelter fails. Without proper rest due to rain, they'd make Resilience check to endure the fatigue.

If you put poison ivy in the game batman will show up shortly after.....

What Whatfrog said really cant be stressed enough. There doesn't have to be an encounter every day. If it doesnt do anything for the story then just skip to the good bits.

I'm not saying that there should be no encounters, but that the pacing should not drag just to have one. If the players get like 'another (insert creature here)? Ho hum, we shoot it' then you shouldnt do the encounter. On the other hand, small side quests can be interesting, especially if there is a moral quandry involved. Things like do we fight the Krayt Dragon looking for pearls even tho that might alert the imperials we are trying to sneak up on?

My players were wandering through a swamp when they heard some low, deep, loud moans from some distance off and some trees cracking as something heavy hit them.

They moved on quickly and never found the source.

Okay thanks everyone! I've already done some foreshadowing, so they can just reach their destination in a day or two. For the record, I liked the concept for the beginner game campaign, but found it far fetched. This version has a moff leading a gem mining operation in secret using Mon Calamari as slaves. There's going to be a big revolt that will lead to the Mon Cala joining the Rebellion unofficially.

Egads - people actually play the "Okay, another hour has passed while you walk. Time to roll on the random encounter table" way? That was one of the most frustrating things about JRPGs like Skies of Arcadia and it's kin. You can't go 30 feet without triggering another time filling encounter.

I agree with everyone above. If it doesn't move the story forward, handwave it with a Scene Transition Wipe.

1 hour ago, Desslok said:

Egads - people actually play the "Okay, another hour has passed while you walk. Time to roll on the random encounter table" way?

Sadly yes. The other GM in our group has had a campaign going for over 10 years now. We only get to play maybe 2-3 times a year. But all our journals have entries like "1325AD, June 14, 9am, cloudy with a hint of rain, we hike for 3 miles on the Trail of the Ancients before..."

If we skip past something, or too long in the day passes with nothing, he'll go to his random encounter charts, which he *loves*. It's kind of a LotR campaign (my character even carries a mysterious orb, which affects me negatively and must be destroyed)...but not even Tolkien wrote hour by hour.

Now, the story is good, the art is mood-inducing, the NPCs fun, and the map is beyond amazing, but he has never really grokked the idea that "encounters should move the story forward". It sounds ungrateful (and we have had quite a bit of fun), but I'm looking forward to it wrapping up.

4 hours ago, Desslok said:

Egads - people actually play the "Okay, another hour has passed while you walk. Time to roll on the random encounter table" way? That was one of the most frustrating things about JRPGs like Skies of Arcadia and it's kin. You can't go 30 feet without triggering another time filling encounter.

I agree with everyone above. If it doesn't move the story forward, handwave it with a Scene Transition Wipe.

This is my first rpg game, so I'm not sure how to GM well. My pcs liked it though, apart from the incessant space mosquitoes!

3 hours ago, whafrog said:

Sadly yes. The other GM in our group has had a campaign going for over 10 years now. We only get to play maybe 2-3 times a year. But all our journals have entries like "1325AD, June 14, 9am, cloudy with a hint of rain, we hike for 3 miles on the Trail of the Ancients before..."

If we skip past something, or too long in the day passes with nothing, he'll go to his random encounter charts, which he *loves*. It's kind of a LotR campaign (my character even carries a mysterious orb, which affects me negatively and must be destroyed)...but not even Tolkien wrote hour by hour.

Now, the story is good, the art is mood-inducing, the NPCs fun, and the map is beyond amazing, but he has never really grokked the idea that "encounters should move the story forward". It sounds ungrateful (and we have had quite a bit of fun), but I'm looking forward to it wrapping up.

I guess it's all about the balance and finding what's right for your players and story.

sometimes throwing in an encounter or a small side quest just for the sake of fun can be very nice. you just create a small disctraction from yoru main story and boost the feeling of an open world where not everything is just there to serve the sole purpose of your story.

I do agree that doing random encounters as a rule, just because the hourglass requires it, is quite painful. it's not the nature of the encounter that should be random; what should be random is whether PCs get into any side encounters or not on their way to their goal.

Just now, thesaviour said:

sometimes throwing in an encounter or a small side quest just for the sake of fun can be very nice. you just create a small disctraction from yoru main story and boost the feeling of an open world where not everything is just there to serve the sole purpose of your story.

Absolutely. It's just, if I had to put a percentage on it, it's about 90% diversion, 10% story. I'd be happy even it if was 50/50.

Yeah it's about pacing. You need to pace your scenes based on what is going on, not based on how much detail you think you can pack into your narration. If you keep a constant, slow pace where you describe nearly every minute in real time you most certainly burn your players' focus out. This way of GMing also has the effect of saying that everything that happens is equally important, and when it doesn't prove to be true your narrative becomes an enemy the players want to defeat. They will stop paying attention, attempt to hurry you, and in general disengage until something actually important happens. I think of four speeds of narration: Time Compression-in which you skip ahead or speed up events, Quick-In which you make only sleight reference to details with preference to describing action, Normal-which is the pace at which most talking or interaction occurs, and Crawl-the speed where you are going slow and describing details with some parity so as to not lead the players obviously as to what exactly is important because of danger or mystery, etc.

There is a very effective usage of random or filler encounters, and that would be the GM stall. Whether you are running a Sandbox game or a railroad game, if you have planned your players to go direction A or B, and they instead want go to C, it can be useful to sometime throw in a random encounter to "delay" the players to give yourself time to think, either to run out the clock time on the session so you can prepare for C by next week, or just while the battle is going on.

Example: Party wants to go to Planet X, which I have not planned at all? Sounds like the perfect time for a gang of street thugs to try to rob the party as they make their way to the spaceport. Meanwhile behind my screen I'm on wookieepedia getting info on planet X.

4 hours ago, ThreeAM said:

There is a very effective usage of random or filler encounters, and that would be the GM stall. Whether you are running a Sandbox game or a railroad game, if you have planned your players to go direction A or B, and they instead want go to C, it can be useful to sometime throw in a random encounter to "delay" the players to give yourself time to think, either to run out the clock time on the session so you can prepare for C by next week, or just while the battle is going on.

Example: Party wants to go to Planet X, which I have not planned at all? Sounds like the perfect time for a gang of street thugs to try to rob the party as they make their way to the spaceport. Meanwhile behind my screen I'm on wookieepedia getting info on planet X.

I've never done that sort of thing. Well, maybe not this week