Hello FFG forums!

I just ran my first ever EotE game tonight, and it went pretty well! My players seemed to have a good time. However, tonight’s game ended up being a little short - we only played for about two and a half hours. I knew I didn’t have a lot of notes going in, but it still went by pretty fast. So my question is, what can I do for next time to pad out sessions a little more and get more hours of playtime? I wanna aim for about 3-4 hours per session. I’m a very new GM, so any advice is welcome.

If it helps, I sent the party to Corellia to follow a bounty, I’m planning on giving them some breadcrumbs to follow. That’s where next week is gonna pick up.

Hi Kim, (I love your forum handle)

Congratulations on that first game, that is very cool. My advice is to really try to practice some techniques in Emergent Play so that you don't have to rely on notes as much for gameplay. This game is particularly good for running off the cuff as it has cards you can buy or stats from the book for NPCs to just change the name of and use in play immediately.

A Name List is really important to have so that you can rattle off good Star Wars names for aliens and non-aliens. That way you look like you had it planed but you just threw a name with a stat block.

The dice in this game also give you all kinds of ways for new things to happen as you can interpret Threat, Despair, Advantage, and Triumphs as new things happening in the world around the PCs. They make a Negotiation check and roll 3 Threat, then some bad guy has now been alerted to their presence. That sort of thing.

Also, the players almost always do things that you can use to propel future events. My friend calls this the Feedback Loop . The players do something, that has an effect, that effect comes back to the players. So if the players help someone, then whomever that person has as a possible enemy might move against the players. I do this all of the time with crime syndicates. There are so many crime factions that you can easily have one group aggressing against another with the players as the pawns. Hutt vs. Black Sun, etc.

It breaks down into Hooks. Either a hook that grabs them or a hook that they grab.

If Emergent isn't really your thing, then there are a lot of Modular Encounters in the books for this game that can be used with the players. The Corellian Book, Suns of Fortune has some and since the players are headed there it would be a great thing to have if you can pick it up.

Good Luck

My problem is always session running longer than I intended! Part of the reason for that is that, besides my main plot, I am always asking my players if there are any other things that their characters want to do. The PCs in my group have their own agendas/obligations that may line up with my main plot or may not. Giving them some time to work on those helps flesh out the world a bit. As PCs build up relationships with a stable of NPCs, you can also return to those. For example, I have had NPCs send messages with potential job offers for the future. I try not to interrupt the narrative when it's really flowing, but sometimes these can work as filler. It depends on the dynamic of your group really. There is a time for scene-wiping a hyperspace journey, and there is a time for discussing how the characters spend that five day trip across the galaxy.

On 8/2/2018 at 8:21 PM, kimdianajones said:

Hello FFG forums!

I just ran my first ever EotE game tonight, and it went pretty well! My players seemed to have a good time. However, tonight’s game ended up being a little short - we only played for about two and a half hours. I knew I didn’t have a lot of notes going in, but it still went by pretty fast. So my question is, what can I do for next time to pad out sessions a little more and get more hours of playtime? I wanna aim for about 3-4 hours per session. I’m a very new GM, so any advice is welcome.

If it helps, I sent the party to Corellia to follow a bounty, I’m planning on giving them some breadcrumbs to follow. That’s where next week is gonna pick up.

Are your player breezing through every challenge presented? How do your scenes unfold? are your players particularly clever?

I'm assuming you don't want to buy published modules, but there are quite a few, and most are good. There are also beginner boxes, and while what's in the box is a bit hand-holding, the PDF download followups are pretty good (plus you get dice).

But anyway, there is an old quote attributed to Raymond Chandler (pretty much the inventor of noir fiction): “In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”

You can use this in a variety of ways to extend things. It of course doesn't have to be "two guys with guns" it can be pickpockets, street-corner prophets, a bank robbery in progress, a protest march, a meteor, etc. Anything that shakes up the scene and either gives the players a chance to, or demands that they get involved. Having a list of two or three of these before the session is helpful to extend things.

There are other pools of resources. Maybe most useful in your case is "set pieces"...small encounters that can be slotted in anywhere. The sourcebooks usually have a few of these, especially the region books like Suns of Fortune (which is centred on Corellia), but there are some in the Compiled Resources thread stickied at the top of the EotE board (one level up). I've also found set pieces and plot hooks for other game lines very useful, such as the "21 Plots" series of books for Traveller. It's a space game too, so very easy to adapt and full of characters and motives. They're cheap to download from https://www.drivethrurpg.com

If you really want to learn to wing it, get a set of Rory's Story Cubes. You can use them in-game or pre-game as tools to spawn ideas of what to do next. We've had some of the best games emerge from this tool. And even if you don't want to buy those, you can always just use a d20, percents, or even a d6. A simple method is to just ask yourself a series of questions, like "what kind of neighbourhood do the PCs find themselves in: upscale or downscale?", and then "are the streets crowded or empty?"...I swear by the time you ask yourself the 2nd or 3rd question, the wheels will be spinning as you figure out why "the streets are empty in this upscale neighbourhood near a water park..."

Lastly, don't be afraid to take a 5 minute break, ask someone to refill the snack bowl, etc while you roll dice or pick a plot or whatever.

3 minutes ago, whafrog said:

But anyway, there is an old quote attributed to Raymond Chandler (pretty much the inventor of noir fiction): “In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”

In this game, especially if the Minion rules are being used, don't be afraid to increase those numbers fivefold.

I agree with all of the points made above. One of the worst mistakes new GMs can make is going into storybook mode or checklist mode. If you are thinking the PCs need to do this to get to that, rethink what you are thinking. Jendefer mentioned asking the players what they want to do and that is key. Even if they are on a mission to capture a bounty, once they arrive on Corellia, ask them if there is anything else they want to do, mention purchasing new gear. A shopping trip on Corellia can make for a full session adventure in itself and the Bounty may make his escape while the PCs are in dealing with thugs in the lower levels.

If you have engaging players, throwing out little tidbits here and there of what they see or hear may take you completely out of your planned session. You just have to have several random encounters in your head to pull from.

Having these two pages can really help with the on-the-fly mini-encounter as it will give you quick stats for an adversary and random names for that adversary.
http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/
http://www.dimfuture.net/starwars/random/generate.php

PS I agree with Archlyte, great forum handle. Best of luck in your game.

On 8/16/2018 at 7:54 AM, Varlie said:

http://swrpg.viluppo.net/adversaries/
http://www.dimfuture.net/starwars/random/generate.php

Here's another for the list: http://swa.stoogoff.com/

On 8/16/2018 at 7:25 AM, whafrog said:

If you really want to learn to wing it, get a set of Rory's Story Cubes.

+1 for these, I have a bunch of them. But I find they're more useful in planning than in play, but my groups have no lack of ability to extend the session.....