So in my last session, the players were transporting a mysterious Rebel agent calling herself Spectre-5 to the Wheel. On arrival at the Wheel they were paid off and promised another job the next day.

In their off time the party of four decided to split up to pursue their own interests. The two rodian sisters (bounty hunter and hired gun) went shopping for some fancy clothes. The pantorian smuggler decided to head to the lower ring to find a sabac game for moderate stakes and the Clawdite doctor decided to attempt to track down a twi'lek slaver the party have a bounty puck for.

The rodian sisters split up when they bumped into a wanted shistaven (wanted alive for 13000 credits). The only information they had described him as highly dangerous and warned that he had allies. Whilst the hired gun continued shopping for pretty dresses, the bounty hunter was able to get the drop on the shistaven his hab block as he brought groceries back. A storm of stun bolts later the bounty was unconscious but the doors to the hab were open and his enraged partner was charging down the stairs.

The doctor decided (without informing any of the others) to shift into a twi'lek and visit a suspicious soup kitchen as a down and out. He then went along with the other victims when they were herded into cages. To wake up as trainee gladiators for the fighting pits.

Meanwhile, the smuggler having found a game in a dive cantina was horrified to discover one of the other players was cheating. He decided that pulling a gun was his opening move before declaring that he would be taking the pot. The cheater's wookiee accomplice laid a hand on the player's shoulder and it was suggested that perhaps he walk away. Combat ensued in which after a mauling from the brawling wookiee the pantorian smuggler was the last sentient standing and he staggered out of the cantina with the whole pot (732 credits).

This is why I don't gloss over between missions downtime. My players don't realize how much trouble they've brought on themselves, unless hijinx ensue.

Yeah, my players also get into alot of trouble when they're somewhere and need to kill time because of repairs or other reasons 😃

It's great =D

Players be players. Last session we rolled the mando's obligation and I made his old clan mates appear for an unpleasant chat, just to give a reason for the strain threshold reduction.

It ended up as a hostage situation, with a blown up hangar on ISO-1.

4 hours ago, Rimsen said:

Players be players. Last session we rolled the mando's obligation and I made his old clan mates appear for an unpleasant chat, just to give a reason for the strain threshold reduction.

It ended up as a hostage situation, with a blown up hangar on ISO-1.

That sounds about par for the course.

5 hours ago, Rimsen said:

...

It ended up as a hostage situation, with a blown up hangar on ISO-1.

What/where is ISO-1?

(Wookieepedia was of no help.)

Something I recent read which gave me a good laugh...

"Writing your own campaigns is like buying one of those expensive 'cat condos', then watching your cats spend all day sitting in the box that it came in and eating the packing peanuts."

11 hours ago, Bellona said:

What/where is ISO-1?

(Wookieepedia was of no help.)

It's a mobile base of operation for Isotech (It's introduced in the Beyond the Rim campaign book)

On 11/15/2020 at 9:57 PM, Vorzakk said:

Something I recent read which gave me a good laugh...

"Writing your own campaigns is like buying one of those expensive 'cat condos', then watching your cats spend all day sitting in the box that it came in and eating the packing peanuts."

This is why I never right more than 1 or 2 sessions in advance, and instead just have a random jumble of ideas floating around in my head.

On 11/18/2020 at 7:37 PM, Stethemessiah said:

This is why I never right more than 1 or 2 sessions in advance, and instead just have a random jumble of ideas floating around in my head.

Yeah I've stopped writing Sessions all together..

I only ever write npc's, locations and events but never ever again in this campaign will I ever try again to preempt what the **** my group will be doing xD

We've been playing for nearly 2 years now and I have (atleast 4) session notes where the prepared stuff has exactly nothing to do with the stuff the group actually tackled and did xD
That was my "wake up call" so to speak ^^

As a GM you need to improvise to a point, of course. But in my experience the veteran players will notice pretty fast if you are not prepared on a regular basis. And if you chose not to invest in the game over the long haul they will not either. Besides, you will make mistakes, not remember names, places or clues from a few sessions before.

I have tons of stuff for campaigns which the players decided to move around or chose to ignore. Thats the game. The gaming experience was always better if the GM was well prepared.

23 hours ago, dreenan said:

As a GM you need to improvise to a point, of course. But in my experience the veteran players will notice pretty fast if you are not prepared on a regular basis. And if you chose not to invest in the game over the long haul they will not either. Besides, you will make mistakes, not remember names, places or clues from a few sessions before.

I have tons of stuff for campaigns which the players decided to move around or chose to ignore. Thats the game. The gaming experience was always better if the GM was well prepared.

Exactly.
Improvisation is a large part, but I at least rely on a large collection of prepared npc's, locations and plot-arc points.
How these find their way into the game is however only planned out either if I know for sure what the players will be up to or just gets improvised based on my players plans.

I personally haven't had the problem of the players not engaging if I needed to improvise, since they themselves regularly state that they have no idea what they're going to do until they do it 😃