After a few game sessions of the beginner box (and a bit beyond) using pre-gens, my group feel they've got a decent handle on the basic rules- and they're ready to commit to a proper campaign. This Sunday game night is scheduled as "roll up a dude" night.

The Core book does a great job discussing all the options available, and the way to go about selecting them, but it's missing any sort of example side bar that I can hand the players. The info regarding PC creation covers a lot of pages. The idea of having 3-5 players pass the book around and actually try to read all the relevant info and options is a bit daunting. So, I guess my first question is: Anybody got a cheat-sheet? Not looking for a generator, just looking for any sort of step-by-step guide that may be floating around.

Aside from that, I'm looking for any general advice from folks who've made a party of PC's a few times. Are there any party configurations that are "broken", at all? Is it cool to let everyone pick "Human", that is, to have a party that's mostly one species? Should I try to balance the party by asking players to vary their careers from one another?

And what about Force Sensitive? Should I allow more than one in the game? I've considered making the group draw lots or roll for it- but I don't want anyone to feel like the character they wind up with is a consolation.

Sunday night is going to be a bit of a proving ground for the few of our group that "think they want to try an RPG". The beginner box stuff went really really well, I'd like to start the core game experience off as smoothly as possible. The prospect of overwhelming anyone or boring them during Character Creation has got me a bit wary.

So, any advice?

Just a couple of thoughts: I don't think players should feel limited by race, FSE, or anything else. You might want at least one character who can be a "face", one hacker/mechanic, one pilot, and one merc, but there's so much cross-over that each character will probably be decent at a couple of these roles. You might want a good backstory on multiple FSEs, but maybe it's the Will of the Force to bring them together.

Basic advice: encourage the players to spend most if not all of their XP on their characteristics. They get 6 (or more) skill ranks at the start, and it's plenty for beginners. This will make your life easier because they won't be spending XP on Talents, and there will be less book-passing. At most they'll need to decide the specialization to get the career skills. Once they get some XP after the first session they'll have more time to think about what to do with it.

I don't think there is a wrong configuration. You might have a group more weighted to combat, or non-combat encounters. That's the sort of thing a good GM needs to take in mind when creating their games. If you end up with a colonist/technician/scout heavy group, you probably don't want to start out with a squad of storm troopers.

Hell, if your guys all want to play Wookiee Marauders, just make your campaign all about tracking down Trandoshan slavers. XD. I say let everyone be whatever they want, as long is it is possible. (aka no Force Sensitive droids and probablly no Womp Rat characters, unless everyone is playing beasties.)

If you look at the original film as a campaign, the starting group was three Humans, two droids, and a Wookiee. The only Force-user was a GMNPC (or an NPC run by a player until the group could rescue the PC).

There are certain roles that, if covered, make non-combat times easier to navigate, but as said above, there are enough skills that even smaller groups will have some overlap. From what I noticed thus far, important skills are:

Pilot Space and Pilot Planet so the party can get around,

Medicine to patch up crit wounds (at first, our party thought it was going to be pointless, then my character took a vibro axe to the chest)

Mechanics to patch up the ship you are flying in, in space. Exploding without a place to crash land isn't good for survival odds.

Face skills, the group doesn't need all of them depending on the play style (charm,negotiation, deceit)

Gunnery if you plan on having space battles.

Computers for hacking/slicing terminals and data retrieval.

Most people will also pick up combat skills by default, so everything works out. The group I'm in actually fit all the needed skills into 3 players. A Bounty Hunter Gadgeteer was both pilots and ranged heavy, An Outlaw Tech that specialized Mechanic/Slicer covered mechanics and computers since had high int complemented both and took medicine as a human skill because it's also int based and I played smuggler face with charm, deceit and negotiation and gunnery for human skill and I was able to also able to throw in Force Sensitive because I wanted it.

Our 4th player is Hired Gun Marauder... their skills and talents only let them fight well so the rest of use had to cover for his short comings, but no one minds (ok marauders can also do pilot planet & coerce, but he as a droid he has 1 agi, so he's not our pilot)

Point being, it doesn't take a lot of work to cover all the bases, when we were deciding roles the 3 of us were almost worried we'd be stepping on each others' toes.

Contact your players a few days before Sunday and ask them to write up a background for their character. They don't have to be that specific either, but throwing in names of other people who influenced them, both positively and negatively is helpful. Then translate that into a character. Done. If they take writing the background seriously, Sunday will take 10 minutes per person. That's how long it will take to convert the background into a character on a sheet.

The background gives you, the GM, plenty to work with as well. Nemesis, obligation, plot hooks what have you and brings the character to life.

Don't get bogged down into the mechanics. Tell a story with them!

Have them think about their characters as "characters" not as collections of game mechanics.

"A twenty year old farm boy from a backwater planet who has always dreamed of being a hotshot pilot like his father"

"A brash and cocky smuggler on the run from a former employer after dumping a valuable cargo"

"A beautiful Princess and Imperial Senator, now doing all she can to aid the Rebellion"

"A prissy protocol droid"

"A feisty astromech droid"

"A smooth talking ladies man, card sharp turned industrial administrator"

"The Wookie partner of the smuggler above, a skilled mechanic"

"A retired Jedi Knight and former general"

"A headstrong Jedi Pawan who constantly chafes against the rules and having to take the slow route"

It should be clear enough who these are. Yes, Obi-wan Kenobi made the list twice. The second appearance of Obi-wan also is his apprentices Anakin and Luke Skywalker, three very different characters who can each grow from the same seed.

Other good help in creating the PC is picking or making up an in-character quote about them, in the way WoD splats have small description of how they see others. For example, I was bit amiss how to make an interesting Pilot, but then, Kyle Katarn provided me with this gem:

"Your generic TIE grunt is just plain suicidal. And the TIE Defender jockey is bloodthirsty. But the TIE Interceptor pilot, he's suicidal and bloodthirsty. When you see a squad of those maniacs flying your way, you'd better hope your hyperdrive is operational."

My +10 Obligation (Desertion) ex-Imperial Pilot was already half-done by the end.

@wormwoode, check out Gribble's reference sheets, nab Donovan and Cyril's species menagerie, dig up the Compiled Resources thread, and then there are various odds and ends floating about. mrvander put together a WEG style character sheet, I did some talent trees.

Good luck on Sunday!

Mostly covered above, I'll just add a couple things:

1. You're going to start with a character idea as he/she/it exists at the begining of the story. Think about what kind of character arc that person has, and let that guide your choice of Obligation. Think in terms of at least two ways that Obligation might resolve ("light" or "dark" to stick with the grene' vernacular...).

2. Look at the "Role" paragraphs and think about what that character might "do" for the party. This can help you put a finer point on skill & talent choices.

Thanks for the good advice, folks. Special thanks to Nate for sending me his run-down list for Creation. Lot of great points made by all. The idea of spending more on Characteristics at the outset really opened my eyes. Makes perfect sense, and it honestly hadn't occured to me yet.

Contacted the players today. Told them to be thinking about who they "were" when they were ten years old, and playing Star Wars in the backyard with sticks and plastic guns or on the bedroom floor with their "no-knee-bending" action figs. I gave them a brief explanation of Obligation and Motivation. They're hopefully coming to the table with a good idea of what they wanna do, and I'll be able to find the stats that match.

Gonna delve into the book again tonight, try to find any specifics that may still be unclear to me. I'm sure I'll have more questions, and I'm really grateful to have so many smart folks here to help answer them. Thanks again.

Let us know how it turns out! Good times had by all!

Alot of good advice in this thread. From my own experience I think the chargen itself works best if you sort of take the group through the process step by step together. From there, group roles, etc. usually sort themselves out as the PCs negotiate among themselves. They can also usually help inform each other's back stories. This allows them to be in more control of their group comp.

And if they're all force sensitive humans, you should have fun hunting them with an Emperor's Hand Nemesis and some 501st Rivals.

Buy the stats you want up front; the first extra attribute point is at least 75 XP away.

At least one player should have mechanic, and at least one should have pilot space, if you're going to use the ship.

It really helps to have one combat monster.

Also, remind them if they're new, they don't have to live with the charecter they create that day. Get them into the game, get them playing, and don't penalize them for what may be percieved as poor choices in the charecter creation process. Once they're having fun in the game, but not satisfied with the character, end the PC in an interesting way and help the player re-roll in a one on one session.

If they havn't played the game in any shape or form, consider offering the free RPG day templates link to get them into the game quickly. You can run a throw-away session or replace the free RPG charecters with created ones over time if the campaign is just too good to stop. You can hand wave stuff to get the group going in the game until everyone's up to speed with the mechanics and engaged in crafting the story. That's the fun of being a GM. Once they see skills and stats in use, it will help them to define what they will want to build into a charecter.