Well I have always been on the PC side of RPG's and with this one I feel compelled to be a GM.

However when we have played through the adventure and the downloadable adventure.

What do I do then? What are the steps needed to get to a playable and challenging adventure or campaign.

cheers,

John

john_nld said:

I like to have a big picture in place for long term campaigns. I don't want to have to plug in background that should have been already there. As in, "Your uncle the smuggler kingpin shows up to hire you for a job", should not be replied with, "I have an uncle that's a smuggler?!".

I love to use TV shows and non-scifi books/movies to give me ideas for a scifi adventure. I do the exact opposite (use scifi) to give me ideas for fantasy adventures.

Example: The Bourne movies. Your characters run into a man with no name and end up helping him since he is fleeing from Stormtroopers. At a key point in the adventure, you and he suddenly discover he is force sensitive as he saves the day. Eventually, as his memory comes back (he had a chip in his brain?), you come to realize he was an Imperial agent of some sort with force powers until he tried to leave (he was an Emperor's Hand).

One place you can start is finding a copy of the star wars saga book called Scum and Villiany which has a lot of information about running a fringe style campaign as well as a bunch of adventure ideas. It's pretty simple to just swap whatever enemies their fighting for the EotE equivalent. Example: If they're fighting storm troopers put in EotE storm troopers if it's droids swap in EotE droids, etc.

If you're not comfortable making big overarching plots it's perfectly viable to make up a bunch of mini adventures and then just string them together. It would make sense as a follow up to Long Arm of the Hutt for the players to smuggle some Ryll Spice for those miners. After that just figure out who they're smuggling it to and throw some obstacles in their way. Generally you want 3-4 major complecations per session and some minor ones. A major complication would be a tough fight, like the stormtroopers fight in Escape from Mos Shutta. A minor complication would be more like dealing with the junk dealer to get the part.

So here is a possible smuggling mission all laid out. The players head back to Ryloth and meet up with their contacts there to pick up and deliver some spice to Dorishan 7, where they are to meet with a Twi'Lek crime boss to offload the spice and get their 10,000 credits.

Once they have the spice and are heading through the city back to their ship a local gang jumps them in an alley and tries to steal the spice. Insert 2 minion groups of 3 Aqualish Thugs(you can describe them as different races if you want) and their leader a Smuggler. Once they're on the ship they need to plot a course to Dorishan 7(made up planet, you can pick something else if you want). But wait this freighter belonged to Trex and he didn't have that system programmed into his nav computer so the PC's are going to have to go somewhere else first to get some upgrades for their nav computer. They know the planet christophsis(google it for more planet info) which is programmed into the nav computer is likely to have what they need so they head there. They land and are charged 200 credits per day for docking fees. They head into the capitol city Chaleydonia and find a shop they can purchase updated charts. The charts cost 2000 credits. They can negotiate for a better price or attempt to steel them. Use the junk dealers stats from Escape from Mos Shutta for this guy too. If they screw up too badly toss in a small minion group of storm troopers for them to deal with. Now they head to Dorishan 7 to meet their contact and get their money. Before they can land though they are hailed by a firespray system defense boat and it's two tie fighter escorts. They are told stand by power down all shields and weapons and await for them to board the ship and inspect the cargo. They players can choose to fight the ships or let them on and deal with them on the ship. If they get on it's a naval officer(give him 1 rank in pilot space and gunnery) and two stormtrooper sergeants(give them carbines instead of heavy rifles). The players can either fight them on the ship or use social skills to keep them from finding the spice. If they fight they will also have to deal with the two ties that are still outside once the ones inside are dead. They finally land which is another 200 credits a day and go meet up with their contact. They can then negotiate with the guy to try and get a better price or choose to take the money. If they succeed at negotiating(use the junk dealer but with 2 ranks instead of 1 in negotiate) they get 12,000, if they fail it's still 10,000, if they fail and have threat/despair they only get 8,000. Now that, that business is over this guy just may have some local business for them to take care of……

So there is an example and here is how you can come up with it and more of your own. Start off by figuring out what type of mission or goal you're going to give the players and write it down. Something like smuggling job, or bounty hunting, or salvaging, etc. Then answer the basic who, what, where, and why in bullet point form.

Bounty Hunting
-target is a human wanted for murder
-reward 14,000 credits
-hiding out in mos eisley on tatooine
-deliver to imperial authorities on Jordango(made up name) for payment

Already that should give you some ideas of possible things to happen. Now just start doing a bullet point of the plot.

-players arrive on tatooine
-search for information on target
-fight breaks out somewhere
-players learn target is in mos eisley but he's in a safe house and has his crew protecting him
-players need to figure out how they're getting in
-etc

After that just add more detail if you have more prep time. Things you should figure out are who they're fighting and have stats ready for them. Basically just start the whole process as simply as you can and just keep adding more information until you have your adventure. The more you do it the easier it gets. Once you get better at it you can come up with bigger plots and linked adventures and do more on the fly reactions to both your players and the dice.

Good luc.

I was going to say something pretty similar to this.

The Spice Miners are a terrific plot hook. For one, they are a source of lucrative criminal profit. The Spice must Flow (wrong Sci-Fi) and who better to take it there (and line their pockets) than the crew of the Krayt Fang? The miners also have a militant faction, kinda like another militant faction the players might be interested in, you know the Rebel Alliance?

I'd also suggest having each of your players give you a contact or two from their character's pre Teemo past. These can be great story hooks down the road.

Trex … it is possible that Trex survived beyond The Long Arm of the Hutt. In my campaign he did not, but his brother Grax is out for revenge, but mostly wants the Krayt Fang, I'd wait awhile to spring this one though, it'll be more fun once the players have forgotten that their ship is stolen.

The Genosian Dukes may want the PCs to run a load of weapons to a buyer.

One or more of the contacts they met at the party may also have plans for the PCs.

Also when in doubt use a story skeleton to help get your brain fired up: " When W happens, the heroes must X. Will they succeed when Y does Z?

Sounds silly, I know, but it works. When a lucrative spice contract falls in the PCs laps, they must get to Rodia in two days. Will they succeed when an enemy from their past tips off the local customs officals of the PCs intent?

lot's of usefull stuff thanks for the inspiration.

I have come accros the wizards published dawn of defiance that looks good as well.

But eventually I still have to make my own campaign one day. Better start with the design and setup of some part of the character background so the characters don't have to be introduced in the first adventure (I am not that creative in describing such a situation just yet)

I will certainly check the scum and vilainy book. A friend of mine has that one.

cheers,

John

My group doesn't have much time for long drawn out campaigns and such these days, plus there are 3 GMs in our group and we all like playing and GMing, so we take turns. We're old, have lives and just prefer playing short one-offs a couple times a month over G+.

The way I put my games together is like this, and I know not everyone likes these sort of games, but our group does:

Come up with an easy plot/scenario. Any idea you think might be fun to put your characters in situationwise.

• What is the place your characters are at? (location, NPC types likely to be around, notable places of interest)
• Why are your characters there? (work, favor, fun, ship breakdown, running errands, etc)
• What happens while your characters are there? These are things that occur around your characters regardless of your characters.
• What interactions do you want your characers to engage in? NPCs, encounters? Things that drive your plot.
• What sort of things are your characters likely to do based on all of the above? (prepare important stuff, wing the rest)
• How do you want the plot to come to a close?

Plan out the important encounters and places, just have a good idea on the rest. Most of the above you can do as little as just make a couple notes on so you don't forget it. Everything else you can make up on the fly based on the location you've established already. Once you start the game off, and your players know why they are where they are or whatever…

Set em free! Let the players drive the story. If they seem to be veering off your plan, you can gently steer them back to what you want, or if your idea is open-ended enough, you can just adjust your encounters and plot a bit to suit what the players are doing. They key is only having a few key encounters that drive the story, everything else the players will fill in themselves. Players often won't do what you want them to do, or what you planned for them to do, you just need to make adjustments. Move your encounters to where the players are at, etc.

For campaigns, you can apply this same mechanic. Keep your overarching story idea, but design it in episodes, with each episode being created in the above way. It's pretty easy really. Edge makes it easy to roll with whatever the players are doing without a lot of prep work. Good luck creating your own campaigns! It's very rewarding.

The beginner's box may seem like a very small amount of material to work with, but it's actually everything you need to create basic games. Here's a tip or two from my own experience as a DM, Storyteller and GM:

When in need, steal everything that's not bolted down.

In the back of the rule book (the one that says "read this last") are stat blocks for several enemies, including Minions and Nemeses. If you want to run a game where the players are facing pirates instead of stormtroopers, just steal the stormtrooper stat block and swap the name out. You can tweak one or two details rather easily to make them feel different, such as dropping their blaster ability a little to make them less "lethal" and giving them an underhanded ability to make up for, such as re-rolling one green dice once per encounter or adding a Boost if their target has already been attacked this round.

Try telling it backwards.

Take the structure of the printed adventure and use that as a template for different types of encounters, then take those encounters and mix them up. I did that below as an example:

Enc 1 (running away into combat) > Enc 2 (using skill and RP in negotiation) > Enc 3 (using skill or combat to complete mission) > Enc 4 (ambush combat) > Enc 5 (using skill or combat to complete mission) > Enc 6 (starship combat and chase scene)

What happens if you ran it in reverse order? Start the session with a starship combat / chase, then the players have to use skills to deal with the aftermath. Maybe they find a business opportunity to help cover the cost of repairs, or to deal with the threat that was chasing them.

Fail forward.

Another thing to remember when you're planning your game: use failures to move the story forward. Figure out what happens if the players succeed or fail at something, and use both opportunities to push the game forward. Say you start with starship combat: what happens if the players get shot down? What happens if the people attacking them escape? Both might require the players to land and get repairs, but if they were shot down then they may not be able to get everything fixed before taking off again. How many times did the Millennium Falcon 's hyperdrive break down in Empire, and turn what was a normal chase into something epic instead?

Good luck, and have fun!

I'd also mention that you should pay attention to what happened in the adventure. I'll note that we played these 2 adventures with characters custom made with the Beta rules-set. However I'll share some of what's going on with the continuation I have planned:

First off the players have to pick up the Kryat Fang and get back to Ota to get their payment for killing Teemo. This means that they’ll be back on Genosis right after killing a hutt. Fortunately they ahd talked to Annata and made sure they weren’t gonna be in trouble with Jabba, but I’ll likely throw down a nice plot hook with Anatta needing them to do some smoothing out with Dimmok. Also, since the group managed to “break the ice” well with Maru I’m going to throw ina hook with the Black Sun wanting in on a piece of the action in Mos Shutta. I’ll definitely play it up as if they’re “a kinda big deal” there… sucker ‘em into that hook

Plus the group still has to get weapons back to Ryloth (they did a deal with Piddock for Nyn). Of course by now other Hutts have heard about New Meen and want in where Teemo’s guys are gone. I’m thinking of diving into the Beta adventure and having Sinasu moving in on New Meen, Nyn will ask the PCs to investigate.

Plus the PCs still have to deal with the fact they took Thweek alive, and they beatdown Vrixx’t and took him prisoner for a short period of time.

So you see, if your players have been really busy in the game, the storylines for your next adventure can write themselves!

Caine Hazen said:

Also, to throw out another great resource, I highly reccomend anything by Engine Publishing . Never Unprepared is a good read for new GMs, and Euraka/Masks are awesome for generating story ideas, especially in an open system like Edge.

Thanks folks.

I'm not sure how I would go about doing the improv stuff just yet but the tips here are great. I'll try some out and change what I don'tlike or need to what the group needs and wants.

Cheers.

john_nld said:

For the improve side, just make stuff up that sounds fun and cinematic, look to movies for examples, particularly things like Indiana jones, Star Wars and firefly/serenity (in fact you can steel most of the plots by just changing the characters for star warsy types.)

west end games did a book focused on gamesmasters which might be worth tracking down for advice and tips or look at the 'per written adventures' thread for additional inspiration.

If doing a merchantile game…

Generate a small cluster of worlds, and their typical trade flows. Your ag world should export food, and import consumer and industrial goods. Your industrial world imports food and entertainment. A world specializing in Entertainments is not bad - it exports both people and recordings, while importing most everything else. Add some other specialties with similar flows.

Build a table listing your travel times from one world to another.

There's a pretty good list of trade goods in the manual for the vaporware Traveller-AR iOS game, which is derived from T5. http://www.traveller-ar.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Traveller-AR-Starport-Guide-2012.pdf

Sample cluster:

Right there, you've got some places to set up and expand upon.

Add a hook or two for each system - like "Nar Kanaa has a city - Mos Kanaa - which is run by an Honest Hutt… Laizze faire capitalist city with citizens electing the mayor based upon purchase of votes." Then, in your GM notebook, decide who wants that hutt gone… and let them get hired to gank him. Or worse, that passenger for Mos Kanaa is the assassin, and the Doro the Hutt has heard its coming, and hired soemone to stop him by any means…

Since it's Star Wars, you can get away with monolithic "single environment worlds" being doable. But you can also expand it to more realistic ones if you want. You don't need a lot, just ideas, and some organization.