I am going to be introducing my nephews to roleplaying and to FFG SRWPG this Friday. Now I have been gaming for around 35 years and GMing for almost that long. I have two active Star Wars games going but with my normal gaming group that are all my age.

Any suggestions/recommendations for running for a group of 12-16 year olds. They are huge star wars fans so the genre and the story should keep them interested. They have their characters (Force and Destiny) all set except minor things we will finalize just before the game.

I was thinking of running the game more episodic than a full campaign style game, at least at first.

The characters are padawans that are just knighted, in fact I will be knighting them at the beginning of the first game. Set in Old Republic time time period. The first mission after being knighted is going to be checking up on a Jedi that has gone silent while on a routine station on some planet and turns out to be a rescue mission once they get there.

I'm looking for any advice to help keep the younger generation interested and entertained and if anyone has any ideas for future episodes.

@KRKappel has had plenty of experiences with this. I bet he can give you some good advice.

Run your campaign as a TV show with each episode being a one shot, sometimes one or two can follow the same story arc. That's what work best with teenagers who aren't much experiment in pen & papers RPG, in my experience. If you include recurring elements like a villain / protagonist / npc who cross the PCs's path regularly and / or bad or good things that happens to them as a sequel from some decision they take awhile earlier, your players will love it.

As someone who's been playing RPG's with even younger kids through my job, I can only say this:

Play like you normally would. Don't underestimate the kids. They're smarter than you'd think.

13 hours ago, OddballE8 said:

As someone who's been playing RPG's with even younger kids through my job, I can only say this:

Play like you normally would. Don't underestimate the kids. They're smarter than you'd think.

After having played the first game, I have to agree. They were very open to the game and surprised me at some on their decisions.

13 hours ago, Varlie said:

After having played the first game, I have to agree. They were very open to the game and surprised me at some on their decisions.

Yeah, I've played with kids ages 8-12 for years, and I've never had to "dumb down" anything.

In some ways it's even more fun to play with them because they're so bloody enthusiastic

In others, it's not so fun (for example, I've noticed that most groups with just boys tend to try and solve all problems with "I shoot it" for the first 6 months or so of playing. Put some girls in the group and suddenly some thinking occurs 😋 )