Hey guys, I just picked up the AoR core book and will be starting a game, but I'm having trouble nailing down how I want to assemble the party. I know I want the game to be focused around the players starting as an unaligned resistance group that causes enough trouble to be recruited into the Rebellion as a whole. I know one of the players is going to be taking the Force Sensitive universal spec., so finding a holocron/master (I'm thinking General Kota) is going to be a plot point.

I've been taking cues from the Clone Wars/Rebels for mission design, but I guess my main question is can you recommend an opening to draw the party together, what are some pitfalls I can avoid, and is there a good rule of thumb for encounter building? I like the idea of minion groups but I'm worried about my players just getting nuked by a group of five stormtroopers.

For "drawing the party together" there are a few ways to go about it. You can drop them into the middle of the action, you can have them as unaffiliated characters meeting for the first time, or you can have them as a group of characters who've known each other for a while and have been planning this. Of course there are other options as well, but this is the baseline. I recommend the third option. I'd suggest starting right at the beginning of the mission, having them plan out where exactly to go, how exactly to go about it, then bringing in the action when they are ready. Another fun thing to do is have Imps kick in the door since they are taking too long planning how to attack the target. Toss out some Vigilance and get 'em up and running (possibly literally).

I am not the person to ask about encounter design as I just go with whatever makes sense and then try to make sure it is the right amount of beatable and won't end in a TPK. As far as using minions groups goes, I think that for starting PCs you probably shouldn't have more than 2x party members total . This is counting all of the minions that make up the groups. From there, how you split them up is up to you. I would suggest starting with army troopers first, and then as they start to hit harder targets and security is higher, then start mixing in Stormtroopers. With Stormtroopers, I've found that groups of 4 are pretty dangerous, but not overly so. They still miss a decent amount at longer ranges. If you are in Short range most of the time with minimal cover, forget about it. They'll probably drop at least one PC unless you spread around their fire. If you've got 4 PCs, I'd suggest two groups of 4 Army Troopers as a significant challenge. Not necessarily a finale sort of challenge, but that'll keep them occupied for at least 3 rounds unless they get really lucky (or are super-optimized for combat). The Army Troopers would have a pool of YYG, so at short range they should be able to drop a PC if you feel the need to, or at least spread around the damage decently.

Something else to consider is that Army troopers are not as fanatically loyal as the Stormtroopers, so it might not be so uncommon for them to surrender or retreat. If the Characters get used to fighting Army Troopers and expect a fairly easy win and you throw some Stormtroopers at them, it'll throw 'em for a loop when the bucketheads deal more damage, take more damage, and don't retreat.

Oh, another question I thought of. Which sourcebooks would you guys recommend in a bang for your buck perspective? I know each class has it's own but benefitting one person per book is a tough sell right now.

Forged in Battle is phenomenal. I found it very useful. From there, it depends on the focus. If they have a commander who is hoping to recruit the population to rise up against the Empire, Lead by Example is decent. Above all, I'd suggest Forged in Battle. If you were to run an Ace-centric campaign, Stay on Target would also be pretty important.

Meet Scenes are hard to pull off unless everyone at the table is committed to making it work. My advice is to make sure you have a table full of players who are willing to be a team and collaborate from the first moments of the game. If anyone gets an ego or takes something as an offense you can quickly have a problem that outshines the circumstances of the situation. I would actually have the players help me to come up with the scene so that they will feel invested in it as well.

So far I think my plan is to set the first session on a resource rich world that the empire has been mining, kinda Lothal style. The players will all be together planning to rescue some citizens who have been imprisoned for speaking out against the harsh conditions, and then go from there when they realize they're now wanted criminals themselves.

Session 0. Ask them how they want to be assembled. You never know, they could come up with a pretty good story all on their own.

As for books, you can't go wrong with Strongholds of Resistance. There's good stuff in there.

As far as which books to get to expand your repertoire, I would actually let the players buy their own. If a player running a spy character wants to pick up the spy source book, let them do it. They'll bring their source books to each game, and you'll be able to peruse them and find out which ones you just gotta have and which ones you can wait to get. It may be worth it, though, to grab a copy of 'Dawn of Rebellion'. Its an era source book that has information on the current state of the galaxy, some interesting and important planets, as well as a quick rundown on the Empire, the Rebellion, and some various independent factions.

I had a group in a similar circumstance and it came down to one of two ideas for me.

The first (which I wound up using) was the PCs were hired to find a missing a girl. In reality, the "girl" was actually a highly advanced infiltration droid (think Guri from Shadows of the Empire) that the Empire was planning on using to infiltrate Rebel cells upon completion. The head scientist, however, who was unable to have children of her own, fell in love with the droid and escaped with her. In the process, they became separated while evading the Imperials, and now needs the PCs help to locate her. In the process, they will discover the truth, have to fight the Empire, and the Empires actions can instill in them the desire to rebel as dissidents, especially if the PCs are already inclined to do so. I went with this group because my PCs chose mostly Edge of the Empire careers, so it was a nice dove-tail into open rebellion.

The other idea I had was that the PCs were in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Basically, while in a cantina, they were assaulted by a Imperial raid, who had info that a rebel spy was present. They came in with orders authorizing scorched earth due to the dangerous nature of the rebel agent. The only problem? Bad intel. The agent was never there. It forced the PCs to fight back for their lives, and set them up as being on the wrong side of the law whether they wanted it or not. The PC's hook then was survival and vengeance, and they were all in the mess together from that point on.

On 12/3/2019 at 8:09 PM, Nyxen said:

Hey guys, I just picked up the AoR core book and will be starting a game, but I'm having trouble nailing down how I want to assemble the party. I know I want the game to be focused around the players starting as an unaligned resistance group that causes enough trouble to be recruited into the Rebellion as a whole. I know one of the players is going to be taking the Force Sensitive universal spec., so finding a holocron/master (I'm thinking General Kota) is going to be a plot point.

I've been taking cues from the Clone Wars/Rebels for mission design, but I guess my main question is can you recommend an opening to draw the party together, what are some pitfalls I can avoid, and is there a good rule of thumb for encounter building? I like the idea of minion groups but I'm worried about my players just getting nuked by a group of five stormtroopers.

How to get them together, depends on the characters really. Do any of them have a shared background? Like, siblings, or students of the same teacher, or both previous slaves of the same compound, that both escaped together? If the players can handle some of the heavy lifting on getting them together for you, all the better.

You can also do it in stages, you don't HAVE to have them all meet at the same time. Perhaps you have the pilot and mercenary meet, because the merc hired the pilot to transport him for a job or something. That job, just happens to take them to Planet Flooboo Yap Yap, where PC #3 is hanging out in the cantina with said bounty target. And then PC #4, who is a Marshall type character (or whatever) shows up in response to the 911 call from the cantina owner.

the first step is to get together with your players and findout what kind of game they want. what kind of characters they want to run and find out what would bring their characters together.

also dont forget to include yourself in what you want to run

Yeah I mean, I've yet to meet a gaming group who isn't aware of the "need to meet up scene" when it comes to opening a new campaign. Most people I've played with are well aware of the fact that it can be a little clunky to put together, especially if the PCs are vastly different in concept and background. So making it more of a group project to tackle makes it a lot easier. Most players are more than happy to make some initial choices simply to facilitate the Meet Cute scene, so they can move on with the campaign. If you simply ask them if they can maybe put their PC into a specific situation like "I don't really care why, but have your character showing up at the cantina to pick up a package. Since you're a courier, it makes sense. Doesn't matter the package, just have that be where he is right now." pretty much everyone I've gamed with responds with "Yeah ok, no problem, I'll say it's a delivery for *insert such and such*" "Perfect, as long as you're at the bar I'm fine."

So it's usually not a big deal if you actively involve your players in solving it.