Hey guys, I was thinking of setting up job Boards with the group I’m running EotE with. I was thinking I’d have a couple different boards, bounty, shipping/trading (smuggling), and one for hired muscle (not sure what to call that one). I’ve read a few adventure modules so I was thinking I would put the starting info for “Mask of the Pirate Queen” and “Jewel of Yaven”, as well as some more benign missions, I.E. simpler bounty hunting and smuggling. The idea is to make a more immersive world for the PCs, instead of grand adventure after grand adventure.

Also, this is my first post. Any advice is appreciated.

I like this idea and use it. I have different kinds of terminals that have different jobs, so they can kind of choose which direction they want to go in with their efforts. In one session of AoR I did this by handing out cards with hooks on them and having the players choose which one they wanted to do. The players told me that they liked this because they go to choose what they were doing. I had others things to do if they didn't want to do any of those hooks, but they chose from the cards and liked the adventures that ensued.

If you want different types of boards from the HoloNet you could have them search by type of work, and literally that could be "Hired Gun Wanted," or "Security Operatives," if you just have an internet-style HoloNet. For even dirtier jobs you could have a deep web or ShadowNet that they have to access through Slicing or maybe Skulduggery and that has access to illegal jobs. I don't use the HoloNet like an internet that is decentralized so that there is much more direct communication and smaller network usage on a world. Because of that I go with different networks run by different entities with differing levels of monitoring.

I would suggest you follow your impulse to have both big long adventures and short simple ones accessed this way. You never know what will develop even from a small hook so this idea of letting the PC's direct their own path through the world is a great one.

One warning, some players have difficulty if they feel their is too much freedom of choice, and they can experience a Sartre-like vertigo of self-made meaning lol. You should ask the players if they feel like they are feeling confident of their ability to navigate the world and address it if anyone mentions not knowing what the game is about, or not understanding where the game is going. I find that when you hear that the players are ready for a long-term goal or medium term goal to wok toward.

A good game has many goals and the goals are visible to the players imo. So try to have ready in your arsenal:

2-4 Immediate Goals

2-4 Short Term Goals

1-2 Medium Term Goals

1-2 Long Term Goals

I once set up a small website for players that represented their personal computer pad or ship computer. There were links to galactic news (players knew where they were on the SW timeline), local news (updated between each session depending on what world they went to), local jobs (often a way to introduce side adventures), current bounties - galactic & local (the PC's loved it when they actually made the list), ship's database (list of party inventory, vehicles, etc), and ship's log (helped players keep track of past gaming events), and a comms login (I would send messages from NPCs to the players between sessions that would help setup the next adventure).

32 minutes ago, Sturn said:

I once set up a small website for players that represented their personal computer pad or ship computer. There were links to galactic news (players knew where they were on the SW timeline), local news (updated between each session depending on what world they went to), local jobs (often a way to introduce side adventures), current bounties - galactic & local (the PC's loved it when they actually made the list), ship's database (list of party inventory, vehicles, etc), and ship's log (helped players keep track of past gaming events), and a comms login (I would send messages from NPCs to the players between sessions that would help setup the next adventure).

Become my GM, pretty please! <3

36 minutes ago, Sharatec said:

Become my GM, pretty please! <3

-All of Roll20

1 hour ago, Sturn said:

I once set up a small website for players that represented their personal computer pad or ship computer. There were links to galactic news (players knew where they were on the SW timeline), local news (updated between each session depending on what world they went to), local jobs (often a way to introduce side adventures), current bounties - galactic & local (the PC's loved it when they actually made the list), ship's database (list of party inventory, vehicles, etc), and ship's log (helped players keep track of past gaming events), and a comms login (I would send messages from NPCs to the players between sessions that would help setup the next adventure).

I’m so stealing this!

Thanks for the great advice guys! I’ll definitely be taking some ideas from you.

What I did was a ways back with old-school html/Frontpage editing with help of an add-on for the messaging. I'm sure it would be much, much easier to do this today especially with the campaign manager websites out there (looks like most require $ though). You could probably do this with free Google sites and a some time. Though crafting it by hand allowed the webpage to actually open up an image of a datapad with various buttons and text on the screen being clickable.

Yeah, while there's a lot to be said for the ease of using a CMS, for this, I'm thinking of just plain html. And, won't have to worry about the $, as I'll just put it in a subdirectory of mySWRPG.com.

Unless I can find a CMS that's easy to use and can provide the look I'm going for.

Woah GM mega plan having a website is awesome, I might do the same but for my group of 5 players I made it as a streetwise slash underground connection sort of way. So I waited until the players came by at nar shaddar and used the slag pit for bountys and the meltdown cafe for smuggling jobs. So at the meltdown cafe it was the bar owner who offers some jobs to who ever orders a specific drink. Don't set it complicate make it random if you have too. For the slag pit jobs all the bounty passes through an old man who plays at the chance cube game hintaro from the book fly casual so if you have a gambler smuggler in your party he will be happy. Each time you bet enough credits and win, the old man talks about a bounty, like an old crazy man totally drunk.

My players keeps going back to nar shaddar to sell the goods the smuggle or report for new jobs. They also have an Homebase there. Anyway hope it helps.

Obsidian Portal allows you to create a whole campaign site. You could easily create a sub-page with the holonet link on it.

On 11/28/2017 at 9:53 AM, Sturn said:

I once set up a small website for players that represented their personal computer pad or ship computer. There were links to galactic news (players knew where they were on the SW timeline), local news (updated between each session depending on what world they went to), local jobs (often a way to introduce side adventures), current bounties - galactic & local (the PC's loved it when they actually made the list), ship's database (list of party inventory, vehicles, etc), and ship's log (helped players keep track of past gaming events), and a comms login (I would send messages from NPCs to the players between sessions that would help setup the next adventure).

This all great and gives me loads of great ideas, I’m already doing a few of them on obsidian portal right now and I think I can do all the others, the only one I’d have problems with is the direct messages unless I want to upgrade to paid service on that site, I’ll try and think of a way to do it though.

48 minutes ago, Norr-Saba said:

I can do all the others, the only one I’d have problems with is the direct messages unless I want to upgrade to paid service on that site, I’ll try and think of a way to do it though.

You could create and imbed or link to your own free forum.

2 hours ago, Sturn said:

You could create and imbed or link to your own free forum.

This is such a great idea

I'm making this for my group. (German only, can't do all the translation work also..).

Jobs will be dynamically generated by script, 1-2 jobs a day. Another script will assign NPC freighters to some jobs, others will just run out and get deleted when they reach their deadline. Player group can sign up for jobs, which will transfer the job positions to their "scratchpad", or loading area. When they pick up the cargo, it will be transferred to their cargo space. And when they complete the job, it will be taken out of their cargo space.

At the moment there are legal and illegal jobs generated, but now only the legal ones are displayed. I will implement an other area, where they can see illegal jobs, but they have to do something (yet undefined action) to get access to that.

Very soon my players will suffer a jump calculation error, which leads them to an abandoned asteroid base (only populated by malfunctioning droids), which they can take as a player base. They will be able to populate it with NPCs they met, to run the base. When the base gets some freighters assigned, they will also get assigned cargo jobs, which generates money for the base..
A little scripting work, but in my opinion totally worth it. Makes the galaxy feel more alive and populated with some background action going on.

The magic is all done by php scripts, json files and a mysql database. The wordpress page only contains an include to the php which reads the job database and then generates the html..

On ‎12‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 10:06 AM, MasterZelgadis said:

I'm making this for my group. (German only, can't do all the translation work also..).

Jobs will be dynamically generated by script, 1-2 jobs a day. Another script will assign NPC freighters to some jobs, others will just run out and get deleted when they reach their deadline. Player group can sign up for jobs, which will transfer the job positions to their "scratchpad", or loading area. When they pick up the cargo, it will be transferred to their cargo space. And when they complete the job, it will be taken out of their cargo space.

At the moment there are legal and illegal jobs generated, but now only the legal ones are displayed. I will implement an other area, where they can see illegal jobs, but they have to do something (yet undefined action) to get access to that.

Very soon my players will suffer a jump calculation error, which leads them to an abandoned asteroid base (only populated by malfunctioning droids), which they can take as a player base. They will be able to populate it with NPCs they met, to run the base. When the base gets some freighters assigned, they will also get assigned cargo jobs, which generates money for the base..
A little scripting work, but in my opinion totally worth it. Makes the galaxy feel more alive and populated with some background action going on.

The magic is all done by php scripts, json files and a mysql database. The wordpress page only contains an include to the php which reads the job database and then generates the html..

such an awesome idea

On 12/3/2017 at 10:06 AM, MasterZelgadis said:

I'm making this for my group. (German only, can't do all the translation work also..).

Jobs will be dynamically generated by script, 1-2 jobs a day. Another script will assign NPC freighters to some jobs, others will just run out and get deleted when they reach their deadline. Player group can sign up for jobs, which will transfer the job positions to their "scratchpad", or loading area. When they pick up the cargo, it will be transferred to their cargo space. And when they complete the job, it will be taken out of their cargo space.

At the moment there are legal and illegal jobs generated, but now only the legal ones are displayed. I will implement an other area, where they can see illegal jobs, but they have to do something (yet undefined action) to get access to that.

Very soon my players will suffer a jump calculation error, which leads them to an abandoned asteroid base (only populated by malfunctioning droids), which they can take as a player base. They will be able to populate it with NPCs they met, to run the base. When the base gets some freighters assigned, they will also get assigned cargo jobs, which generates money for the base..
A little scripting work, but in my opinion totally worth it. Makes the galaxy feel more alive and populated with some background action going on.

The magic is all done by php scripts, json files and a mysql database. The wordpress page only contains an include to the php which reads the job database and then generates the html..

and the program does all of this automatically?

When it's done: yes. The players have to pick the jobs they want to do manually, but the rest is done via script.

As GM I have the option to tweak some things, of course..

6 hours ago, MasterZelgadis said:

When it's done: yes. The players have to pick the jobs they want to do manually, but the rest is done via script.

As GM I have the option to tweak some things, of course..

Very impressive. Wish I had the coding skills to do something like that. Two thumbs up!

Honestly there is not that much skill needed. I'm a very beginner in php and learn with this project. Mostly I run into problems ad then google the solution

Basically you can break it down into:

- Writing into a MySql database (or text file, I began with text files, moved to json files and then to database)
- Reading from database
- Picking a random element from a list
- a little html to present the data

Maybe a little css for the images in the ship name tooltips

Everything started with this one here (pick a random line from some text files and present it via simple html): https://rpg-duelmen.de/stuff/swgenerator/swgenerator.php?freightjob_wildspace

@MasterZelgadis This is very cool, and I’d love to see the finished product after you’re done, I would really love to make something like this for my crew to use, but I have absolutely no coding ability lol

Well maybe I can build in some multi group support and english language.. but I have to double check that when it's finished

The project starts to take shape.. I have nearly finished the controller script for the npc groups, and while coding I continously think about implementing some sort of multi group support. Currently I think that I will keep this page for my group, but maybe can use the finished project to build some sort of living campaign platform, where the timeline will be set, but multiple groups can play their adventures in, post news and use a galaxy-wide-group-overarching bulletin board for freight jobs, smuggling jobs and bounties. No promises here, but that is a plan I could flesh out a little bit more..

....and this is easily convertible: https://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/swfj/

1 hour ago, ExpandingUniverse said:

....and this is easily convertible: https://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/swfj/

I’ll definitley be making some heavy use of this, especially for generating bounties coupled with the rules for bounties in no doscontigrations

4 hours ago, MasterZelgadis said:

The project starts to take shape.. I have nearly finished the controller script for the npc groups, and while coding I continously think about implementing some sort of multi group support. Currently I think that I will keep this page for my group, but maybe can use the finished project to build some sort of living campaign platform, where the timeline will be set, but multiple groups can play their adventures in, post news and use a galaxy-wide-group-overarching bulletin board for freight jobs, smuggling jobs and bounties. No promises here, but that is a plan I could flesh out a little bit more..

@MasterZelgadis really happy that this is progressing and I look forward to the finished result, I was wondering if in the mean time since you said that it picks things from a random list of you could make that list available, especially the planets list for the choosing of starting point and destination, I think that would be a really helpful tool for people until you can get this fully off the ground.

For my own group I have so far put a section on our group wiki called the boss hollow net that includes sections where I can send them group and personal messages from npcs, a section for galactic and local news based on their exploits and information I want to introduce for them but don’t have a way to introduce it in play, and a bounty board and shipping board, both of which I am currently generating manually.

the messaging is not a true private messaging but just links to other wiki pages with messages, but I’m trusting my group to only read what they should and to not meta game.