Hey guys and galss,

I'm about to start an Edge of the Empire campaign for a group of friends and I need a bit of advice. They want to be a group of bounty hunters, which I'm fine with, but I'm pretty desperate for some adventure ideas.
I've never run a game that wasn't pre-generated so I'm a little unsure how other GMs go about preparing such things.

Can anyone give me a few hint/tips/adventures?

Thanks in advance guys
Fanficfan

Sorry in advance if this is preachy, but I don't know your experience level or your group's

There is a pre-published adventure in the Core Rulebook, "Trouble Brewing," which is a bounty mission. As bounty hunters you can pretty much set the pace and objectives of each adventure. When designing your adventures consider breaking the jobs into encounters: 1) Research and planning; 2) tracking and locating; 3) capture; 4) transport; and 5) getting paid. "Trouble Brewing" sort of follows this format. For each encounter you plan to run design a particular challenge for the PCs. This could take the form of a particular adversary, an environmental obstacle, or a moral dilemma. You don't have to run each of these 5 encounters, so feel free to rush past the step if its straightforward, but knowing the possible plot twists or obstacles ahead of time helps you keep the action flowing. Try to find the balance with preparation and over preparation to avoid railroading the PCs into a set solution for each challenge. If they figure out a creative solution that you weren't expecting, roll with it and improvise.

Potential challenges:

• Another bounty hunter tries to poach your acquisition before delivery.
• The target is protected by some powerful faction (another Hutt). How do you drive a wedge between the target and his protector considering force isn't an option.
• The target is a member of the Rebel Alliance (common trope). Do you turn him over or look the other way?
• The team must infiltrate a place where the bounty hunter trade is not particularly welcome (like Socorro).
• Good old fashioned double cross on the payment (don't use this too much or else the PCs will be too paranoid).
• A series of targets where they must be live captured, but they are particularly strong and a combat challenge.
• Trying to find someone who is truly off the grid might require a parallel mission to somehow slice into Imperial intelligence to get the target's location.

tldr, check out "Trouble Brewing."

My go-to crutch for game design: Steal. Steal everything. From books, comics, movies, nothing is off the table. Take scenes, take combat ideas, steal character ideas or set pieces, all of it.

For a bounty hunter campaign, I'd watch some movies and try to build something star wars out of it. Want it to heavily involve the mob, watch mob movies. Turn a crime boss into a Hutt. Check out Narcos on Netflix and crib some characters that would have bounties on them - then let your characters go nuts.

You will also need to know your players and their PCs. Are they combat focused? Give them some fights. Have them chasing down rival criminals that their patron would like to see off the street and out of competition. Do they want to do investigation? Have them hunt down smugglers who've up and disappeared, starting with their last known run and going from there. Are they tech-oriented? Have them steal things (or steal things back).

Now, if they're anything like my players, they will want to do all of it, so...

I'd start with them receiving the job from a Rodian who works for a Bothan who works for a Hutt. Don't ask which Hutt - you don't need to know. This Rodian wants you to track down a smuggler who was supposed to take a relatively small item from a cantina on Ando and drop it off on Toydaria. Never showed at the drop off. The smuggler is a Corellian named Shara, and she runs a Ghtroc 720 called the Hard Top. The cargo was about the size of an average piece of luggage, but heavy. Really heavy. And locked - that's one thing the Rodian stresses - it was not to be opened. He wants the box back, with a bonus if it's intact, and an even bigger one if they deliver Shara, too (alive - another point he stresses).

So the PCs go to Ando. They can get in a bar fight with some Aqualish (turns out Shara is a regular and they hate people poking in her business), but a bit of sniffing around turns up some upset gamblers willing to dish. They say Shara lit out with a gambler (who took them for a mountain of credits), mentioned something about hitting the sights together - Bespin, Canto Bight, the works. Now the PCs need to find out where the Hard Top left to - which could involve bribing port officials, slicing into their computer system, buying the info - point is, they've got options. Wherever they go, there will be other criminals who may not be too happy to have bounty hunters poking around on their turf.

From there, figure out where they go. Keep in mind the PCs might guess, so don't plan TOO much. What you need to know is: what's in the box? Did Shara or this gambler know that when they deviated from her flight plan? Do they know it now? What are they going to try to do once they discover they have a bounty on their head? Did they betray the Rodian (and Bothan and Hutt), or are they just two beings in love? I've got my answers - but I would also change them if my players came up with something better in the course of play.

Let your players guide you where they want to go, and have fun.

Do you have No Disintegrations? It has plenty of good game ideas too.

http://thehydianway.com/2017/11/19/episode-168-the-bounty-board-tale/

I think one thing you could do would be to make a list of marks for them to simulate what is on the terminal. Just give them the Name, Species, last location known, and reason for the bounty. You just would need to make a list of these Hooks and then have the players choose one.

I think that improvisation is an essential skill for a GM to hone, so don't be apprehensive about coming up with stuff on the fly. The Books have plenty of enemies to choose from and re-skin as the Target of a Bounty, so you have a ready made rogues gallery.

Players come in two varieties in my experience: those who want to observe a story, and those who want to make a story. If your players are all the first type, they typically will be reactive players without much initiative, who will want you to do the work while they go along for the ride. The other type of player will resent being told to follow a story and will want to affect the adventure by their choices.

If you are going the pre-made route then I suggest what the others said and just find more pre-made adventures and run those.

If you want to be able to do what is called Emergent Play, then you will need to do your prep as a general thing. Make up Places, Things, and People but don't connect them to the players by a sequence of planned events. The players do things all the time, and you can use what they do to create the game on the fly if you take their actions and create reactions and some other unrelated events but without forced connection to the players. If you do plan something out ahead of time you have to be willing to let the players bypass or miss it without becoming disgruntled. That can best be done by avoiding prepping things that you will be unhappy if they skip them.

There are things you can definitely still throw in their way, and you should do that, but don't have a foregone conclusion as to what will happen.

Emergent Play very neatly solves the problem of having to buy adventures or download them, but it requires that you adopt a mindset that the players are making the story instead of being an audience. I'm happy to answer more questions on this if you need help.

On 2/20/2018 at 1:40 AM, tfn-fanficfan said:

Hey guys and galss,

I'm about to start an Edge of the Empire campaign for a group of friends and I need a bit of advice. They want to be a group of bounty hunters, which I'm fine with, but I'm pretty desperate for some adventure ideas.
I've never run a game that wasn't pre-generated so I'm a little unsure how other GMs go about preparing such things.

Can anyone give me a few hint/tips/adventures?

Thanks in advance guys
Fanficfan

Track down a copy of No Disintegrations. No, not that one, this one:

Check the D6 Holocron.

It's a collection of pregenerated bounty Hunter adventures.

You'll have to restat things to the FFG system, in most cases you can just swap out the stuff listed for something already statted out in an FFG book. Likewise general skill difficulties use similar terms (WEG Moderate = FFG Average) so that's easy enough. I the end there should be little to actually work out.

I actually ran an adventure from this book in the FFG system once with no issues.

https://red-talon-wanted-dead-or-alive.obsidianportal.com

Feel free to borrow steal ideas

In addition to all the great sources and ideas presented, I would like to voice an alternative source: Cowboy Bebop.

I recommend this anime if you want ideas for running Edge of the Empire, keeping your players a day late and a dollar short.

On 20/2/2018 at 3:40 AM, tfn-fanficfan said:

I've never run a game that wasn't pre-generated so I'm a little unsure how other GMs go about preparing such things.

Keep it simple. See the Obligations of your PCs and create a villain (or Heroe) that resonate with the Obligation and a good reward. With this start, think of a twist.

Example:

Obligation: Familly -> Make a close familiar the Mark. The twist? It was a fake crime created by a Nemesis (a Hutt, is always a Hutt), trying to catch the PCs.

Obligation: Addiction -> Make a dealer the Mark. The Twist? The Dealer is an ISB agent trying to catch some smugglers.

If you hit multiples obligations/motivations you have the receipt for a great story.