It's gone a bit quiet on here the last couple of days, so thought I'd start a new topic of discussion concerning game prep.

So, my first few sessions were run very much as structured, pre planned adventure module on a single planet. It went really well, and everyone loved it, but now they're out in the big wide 'verse I'm having to completely pivot my session planning style.

I think I've come up with a good system consisting of 3 layers of prep.

Location overviews, location encounters, obligation encounters.

Location overviews: these are never more than a small handful of systems they're likely to want to go to based on current plot, leads, whatever just happened in that session.

Location encounters: These will be forming the bulk of each session, and vary from small street encounters to full blown confrontations, but will be mostly what drives the plot on. Each being some notes on who, why, what, with quick profiles of any throw away NPCs for the smaller ones.

Obligation encounters: I've made a list that currently consists of one small minor encounter specific to each PC's obligation. These can then just be plonked in at a convenient point in the session when someone's obligation has been triggered. I intend to use these as an escalating thing, so right now, each one is quite minor. But once used I will replace it on the list with the next logical stage for that obligation's plot.

Eg. The smuggler woth the debt to a Hutt, gets recognised by an old acquaintance who still works for that Hutt, queue friendly chat "I thought you were dead", yada yada. Once that's been used I'll replace it with something aling the lines of said Hutt sending someone to come and get him, as he needs something doing, and so on and so forth.

So that's how I'm going to be running things going forward, hopefully should keep my prep relatively low, while allowing me to be flexible enough to cope with a bunch of Space Murder Hobos.

Would love to hear what the rest of you fine GMs do.

My group and prep is a bit different. We have a decent group of players and GMs and cycle through games in 6 week sessions so it's not one ongoing game for months on end. This allows me to prepare "an episode" which is usually contains a main story arc that I hope the players latch onto. Most of the times they do but sometimes the game jumps into the sandbox and takes on a life of its own.

I like your thinking process and use something similar. I read up on what sector they are in and what planets and opportunities are nearby, but this is Star Wars- jumping from Outer Rim to the Core worlds is but a screenwipe away. I have built up several non-core NPCs that I can pull out and give a random name to in order to have anon-planned encounter. I have all of the characters backgrounds in the back of my head and will throw out random hooks to see if any of them catch on but will slowly edge them back to the main storyline unless it's completely failed. Duty and Obligation and the general desire for making a profit does help get them back on line. So far, I have not had to just scratch a story completely in Star Wars (I have in other games, like Mutants and Masterminds).

Regarding planet preparation ...

When it comes to games with such a big sandbox as Star Wars has, I consider it to be a necessary courtesy from the players' side to inform the GM if they plan to leave the current planet next session, and if so to which planet they intend to travel.

Of course, it's good to have an "emergency" planet or two in one's mental backpocket, to pull out in case of sudden unplanned departures. ("Oops, we killed the Hutt's favourite dancer/Oops, we revealed our Jedi's presence to the Grand Inquisitor/Oops, we attacked what turned out to be the ISB HQ for the entire sector ... and he/she/it/they are sending an overwhelming hit squad after us" type of situations.) Then when the party's starship has finally made it far enough out to jump, the frantic hyperspace calculations - using a damaged navcomp - miss one decimal point and they end up at that emergency planet. Probably needing to arrange for starship repairs at the very least.

Needless to say, it's easier if the plot is tight enough and the players good enough to follow it (also known as a railroad to some). Then the GM knows which locations/planets need to be prepared ahead of time.

18 hours ago, Bellona said:

Regarding planet preparation ...

When it comes to games with such a big sandbox as Star Wars has, I consider it to be a necessary courtesy from the players' side to inform the GM if they plan to leave the current planet next session, and if so to which planet they intend to travel.

Needless to say, it's easier if the plot is tight enough and the players good enough to follow it (also known as a railroad to some). Then the GM knows which locations/planets need to be prepared ahead of time.

I'm with you on this. After a while I actually started asking them why they wanted to go somewhere before the hyperdrive motivator lever is thrown. I feel that they need to have some reason to be doing things and not just fishing for hooks they like at the expense of time.

On 12/3/2019 at 3:44 AM, Stethemessiah said:

I think I've come up with a good system consisting of 3 layers of prep.

I start with NPCs, the rest sort of writes itself. Where the NPCs live or frequent will usually be important, so those locations get fleshed out, as well as any home bases; these would probably match your "location overviews". The rest I tend to do on-the-fly. If I know for sure where the PCs will be (like where the session is starting or where they say they are going) I'll spend more time on the locations to try and make them unique. But otherwise it's rarely worth the time because I usually can't predict how they will approach a problem. Example:

I ran a murder mystery twice, once for my son (a Jedi Sentinel) and once for my friends (two cops, a Starsky and Hutch meets Bladerunner type deal). They zeroed in on the main suspect in completely different ways, and once they felt they had him it was resolved differently as well:

The Jedi tailed the suspect back to his home, an apartment in a skyscraper, made his way to the top of the building and Jedi-jumped down to the balcony, planted a listening device on the balcony window, caught the suspect red handed whereupon shots were fired (and deflected) and a short speeder and foot chase ensued.

The cops didn't tail him home, they waited until he contacted another suspect, watched that meeting, heard about a "party" coming up that the suspect was hosting, found out where the party was (some abandoned industrial district), set up listening devices and a back door so they could arrive as "guests", shoehorned their way into the queue of well-wishers at the party, and ended up having a Collateral-style shootout in the dance rave that was going on.

To accommodate all that, my best friends are: NPCs with fully fleshed motives and agendas; a pair of d10s (percentile dice) for quick decision-making; and a set of Rory's Story Cubes for more elaborate situations. Oh, and watch and rewatch the Clone Wars and Rebels just for set pieces and location ideas...

Today's session went really well, everyone enjoyed themselves, the encounters worked, one of the obligations came up, and played out really well without overbearing anything.

Every player ended the session psyched up for the next one. Really really loving playing Edge, now we're getting properly into it.