Hi all! Some of this might be pretty stupid but I'm new to this and am going to try to run an Edge of the Empire game for some of my students while we're all quarantined. I have the EotE and AoR starter sets and books and am looking through stuff but am slightly confused.

First, I'm going to try to get 6 PCs and I've read that's workable with making some things tougher or more numerous. Is that true and will mixing in a few of the premade dudes from the AoR starter into the EotE opening scenario work ok? One girl wants to play Zal who could easily have crashed on Tatooine and having a pilot would seem to be a good idea.

Also, the character sheets have a short skill tree which doesn't match what's there under the different careers. Should I just use those and have them respec into the larger skill trees at some point if the game goes long enough?

Finally, I'm checking out Roll20 and hear tell of something to load Star Wars dice into it but can't seem to find it. Is it a myth? I could always just roll everything myself and use my document camera for dice I suppose. Thanks in advance and I'm sure I'll have some more silly questions.

25 minutes ago, PenguinBonaparte said:

First, I'm going to try to get 6 PCs and I've read that's workable with making some things tougher or more numerous. Is that true and will mixing in a few of the premade dudes from the AoR starter into the EotE opening scenario work ok? One girl wants to play Zal who could easily have crashed on Tatooine and having a pilot would seem to be a good idea.

Yes, and yes. You just may want to convert the pregens to the full character sheets, since they lumped together similar skills like Piloting and the Knowledge skills.

26 minutes ago, PenguinBonaparte said:

Also, the character sheets have a short skill tree which doesn't match what's there under the different careers. Should I just use those and have them respec into the larger skill trees at some point if the game goes long enough?

No, like I said above, you should convert them over to the full character sheets. They are dumbed-down for entry-level players (which it sounds like your group is), but if you're going to include characters built as per RAW, you should convert them over (I can help you with this if you need assistance). If you are going to run them all off of pregens, then keeping them as-is would probably make the most sense.

28 minutes ago, PenguinBonaparte said:

Finally, I'm checking out Roll20 and hear tell of something to load Star Wars dice into it but can't seem to find it. Is it a myth? I could always just roll everything myself and use my document camera for dice I suppose. Thanks in advance and I'm sure I'll have some more silly questions.

I've not used Roll20, but there are some pretty useful dice apps out there, like Orokos and SkyJedi , the latter of which is pretty much a one-stop-shop. Initiative trackers, dice, destiny pools, wound and strain trackers, a critical injury/hit roller (that automatically tells you the result so you don't have to refer to the chart), an input for modifiers (automatic Advantage as an example), etc. Orokos is much more bare bones and has a bit of a steeper learning curve for the dice rolling given the method of input, but it is quite good at what it does. Here's an example of the input: 1eP+1eA+1eB+1eF+1eC+1eD+1eS. Translating to 1 P roficiency, 1 A bility, 1 B oost, 1 F orce Dice, 1 C hallenge, 1 D ifficulty, 1 S etback. ([Number of dice]{lowercase "e" for edge}[First letter of die name])

Awesome, thank you! I think converting it shouldn't be too hard and will give them a little more ownership of the characters. So far we've got the wookie, the droid, and the ace. Not sure what others want to do, but this helps a lot. Just really wasn't sure if there was something I was missing with the careers and all. I misunderstood how SkyJedi worked but logging into it now it seems super easy too.

Balancing encounters with more players than "the normal 4" is quite easy. The entry parts of the starting adventures shouldn't be there to challenge the party but show them how everything works.
This is the best time to test the waters for balancing what you can throw at them and how beaten up they finish encounters. Just start with the numbers in the adventure and if they get through the first encounters too easy, add more. Start with adding one minion to minion-groups then test how they do if you replace some of the minion-groups with a rival or adding a new minion-group to the encounter.

Usually, first-timers don't notice that u are still testing the waters with encounters, as they are too busy learning the rules and playing the game.

And for the future: Don't be afraid to include encounters that are way too easy OR too hard (with the option to flee or get captured) but realistic how they are set up. Encounters don't generate XP like in some other games - tell a story.

53 minutes ago, Malashim said:

And for the future: Don't be afraid to include encounters that are way too easy OR too hard (with the option to flee or get captured) but realistic how they are set up. Encounters don't generate XP like in some other games - tell a story.

This, definitely. Very good advice.

On 3/31/2020 at 5:15 PM, PenguinBonaparte said:

wookie

*Wookiee

Also, in the player resources tab for Edge and Age product lines on the FFG site, there are extra characters and adventures to download.

I would like to link, but I am on my phone.

Cynabar

38 minutes ago, Cynabar said:

Also, in the player resources tab for Edge and Age product lines on the FFG site, there are extra characters and adventures to download.

I would like to link, but I am on my phone.

Cynabar

Edge of the Empire: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire/

Age of Rebellion: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-age-of-rebellion/

Just go down to the bottom and expand the box that says "Player Resources" and scroll through to find what you need.

As mentioned by others. 6 is manageable. I have 6 players. But with people's busy lives and varying circumstances being what they are, it's usually 5 players, as someone is usually missing. That said tommorrow I'll have 7 players around the table on Tabletop Simulator as I have a guest player.

It's just about finding the right amount of enemies to throw at them, and you wont know what works well until you try. I also find it helpful to remind players to think about their actions before their turn rolls around, and not let them take up too much time. This keeps play at a good pace and keeps it from getting bogged down.

Its manageable, and I wouldnt discourage having so many. But I will admit that 5 players is the perfect amount. That means you'll usually always have at least 4.

9 minutes ago, CloudyLemonade92 said:

Its manageable, and I wouldnt discourage having so many. But I will admit that 5 players is the perfect amount. That means you'll usually always have at least 4.

I would take issue with that. 4-6 is my sweet spot, I think, but saying something is the "perfect amount" is too subjective. Every GM has their own sweet spot, there isn't any one-size-fits all.

14 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I would take issue with that. 4-6 is my sweet spot, I think, but saying something is the "perfect amount" is too subjective. Every GM has their own sweet spot, there isn't any one-size-fits all.

*backs off slowly, hands raised*

Going to be starting a campaign tomorrow with 4 players. Usually I run with 5 or 6, but whenever someone is missing and we have fewer people I always feel the game goes a lot smoother and players have more opportunities to stand out individually.

My group is kind of indecisive so the less players the easier and smoother. 3-4 is "my spot". I can focis more on the characters personally.

On ‎3‎/‎31‎/‎2020 at 5:14 PM, PenguinBonaparte said:

Hi all! Some of this might be pretty stupid but I'm new to this and am going to try to run an Edge of the Empire game for some of my students while we're all quarantined. I have the EotE and AoR starter sets and books and am looking through stuff but am slightly confused.

First, I'm going to try to get 6 PCs and I've read that's workable with making some things tougher or more numerous. Is that true and will mixing in a few of the premade dudes from the AoR starter into the EotE opening scenario work ok? One girl wants to play Zal who could easily have crashed on Tatooine and having a pilot would seem to be a good idea.

Also, the character sheets have a short skill tree which doesn't match what's there under the different careers. Should I just use those and have them respec into the larger skill trees at some point if the game goes long enough?

Finally, I'm checking out Roll20 and hear tell of something to load Star Wars dice into it but can't seem to find it. Is it a myth? I could always just roll everything myself and use my document camera for dice I suppose. Thanks in advance and I'm sure I'll have some more silly questions.

First, welcome to the GM fold.

As for number of players, that can vary based on the GM. I've seen GMs flourish with 8 or more players, and seen GMs flounder with only 3 or 4 players, and for a wide variety of systems, from D&D/d20 to FATE to RoleMaster to FFG's Star Wars and much in between. Everyone's got their own personal "sweet spot." Personally, I find that after six characters, you start seeing a fair bit of overlap into who's the expert at what, which isn't too big of an issue for combat-focused characters (you'd just need to scale up the opposition in combat encounters) but gets more troublesome for other types of encounters, as you've potentially got two (or more) PCs jockeying for a chance to shine. But again, each GM is different in how they're able to handle it; as noted, I've seen one GM easily handle 9 players in a Genesys one-shot with no beats missed and nobody left sitting on the sidelines, and I've seen other GMs stumble through an adventure with only 4 PCs.

Yes, you can add in the AoR pre-gens to the EotE starter adventure pretty easily, though it's worth noting the AoR PCs were built with the advantage of about an extra 1000 credits' worth of equipment (from character creation, the AoR characters chose the "hidden base of operations" for starting resource), but then the EotE pre-gens weren't built entirely within the rules either (most of them have too much starting XP applied for the equipment they have), so it ultimately works out.

As for if the game goes on past the initial adventures, then yes let the players respec those characters into the formal specialization trees. The pre-gens were pretty much meant to be used for the beginner box adventure, the follow-up adventure from FFG's website, and that's about it. Of course, you could just let the PCs continue to use the custom-built talent trees included for a given pre-gen, but their talent advancement options are going to be quite limited, so it's king of a YMMV type of thing.

I know there's at least one Roll20 add-on that lets you import the Star Wars (and Genesys) dice as well as Destiny/Story Point pools, but I don't know the name of it as my familiarity with Roll20 is fairly limited. I've heard that it can be somewhat glitchy and the dice bot tends to roll on the lower side of things (positive dice often coming up blank, negative dice coming up with far more failures than would be expected).