Now I'm new to tabletop(i guess) RPG's in general(I'm familiar with video game RPGS). And I was thinking if me and my friends were to start a group, and for the sake of this argument I was the GM. How would my character if we ever did rotate me in compete next to the others?
I was thinking of possibly creating a character for me, that would serve as a small time rival/recurring (nominally adversary) character to keep things interesting and to make plots involving a team up later on more interesting. Is this plausible, or would i just keep xp tabs up to date with them?

You could build a character with the same amount of XP as the group, or make a fresh character. Either would work really. A low XP character is not as bad off in this system as compared to others.

With that being said, if the party's average XP is around 300, you may want to give yourself some.

Think of it like this... in ANH Han was far from being a new character, same with Old Ben, but Luke did just fine as a starting character.

if you really wanted to be on equal footing, just track how much xp you've given the group, then when it's your turn, give your character that much xp.

But Dex is right. There is no "levelling up" like in other systems. you don't gain strength, and dexterity, and hit points, and stuff like that when you get experience (except in very specific cases), so the only thing you'd be missing out on are Talents (kinda like "powers" or "perks", I guess), money, and gear.

alright, thanks!

running your character as part of the group is not to hard and will include you a bit more.. i used to run what i would call a tank mentor as part of the group..

his military expertise was avalible when really need but his silent jaded personality meant he rarely participated in social encounters.. he was conveniant as i could get the group into trouble or out of it if needed and had a valid reason to impact the story line..... he could take the surprise hit without upsetting the charcters and if someone needed to do off screen guard duty he would just stay behind

if your are running a pc and being GM never overshadow the real PCs.. never show favortisim to your character...

thus jaded clone war veteran bodyguard

retiered smuggler that has taken one of the pcs as a mentee

medic character are always good as can plug a hole in the player group

mechanic / driver so you can be off screen as get away driver..

utlity droid to fill gaps in player group

just let your player make there charater first or in conjuction..

dont be the face or in your face character that is for the pcs

dont plug all skill gaps or as gm you will have no weakness to play with

Generally speaking though, GMs running a character is often frowned on unless you're good at keeping the two roles entirely separate, because you will already know what is going to happen ahead of time.

I'd actually suggest you just act as a GM, and not run a character, until you get used to how the game works - trying to juggle both is something many veteran GMs don't even manage.

I would steer clear of running a character while you're GMing the game. It rarely ends well, and you'll have enough to do running all of the NPCs in your universe.

It's very hard to run a GMPC without stealing the spotlight from the players or influencing their decisions unfairly. Not every GMPC is as bad as some of the horror stories out there, but there's really no good reason to run your own PC - anything you could do with that character would be done better by an NPC ally (and then, since it's not "your" character, you can make horrible things happen to him to motivate your PCs).

If you really want to play as well as be the GM, I suggest that you keep track of how many XP the lowest character in the party has, and rotate GMing duties from time to time. Then you bring in a PC, as a player, built with that many XP. Whenever someone takes over GM duties, you come up with a reason for his/her character to be out of the game for the duration.

In Star Wars, it's not hard to have a reason for your character to vanish for extended periods of time while you're GMing. He/she could be training on a different planet, running a legitimate business on a different ship, frozen in Carbonite, infiltrating an enemy organization, or just taking a well-deserved vacation on a pleasure planet.

It can also be fun to switch up GM duties every now and again - it helps avoid GM burnout and tends to keep players more engaged.

Our group has had a rotating GM for a long time. We usually maintain our own characters, and just give them equal value to the others for exp. We'll play them a bit while GMing, but they usually maintain a background roll. They're the one who guards the ship when others rush off to do the mission, or they get kidnapped and act as the prize to be rescued. That sort of thing. That way they can occasionally participate in the roll play aspects, but are out of the way for the fighting and heavy mechanics areas.

Once a story arc ends, we'll hand it off to the other person, and he'll start GMing, let his character move into the background, and I'll be able to step up and really play mine. It can have issues. You need to really make sure you don't step on the toes of the other GM, but if handled well can be a lot of fun, and I don't feel like I'm stuck in one roll all the time.

Simply because it occurs to me that this might be interesting to do:

If you know who your other GM is going to be, why not sit down with him/her and come up with a character that would be interesting to both of you. Then, while one is GM'ing the other can be playing the mutual character.

Bonus points for giving it a split personality to account for different play styles. Perhaps some modified Obligations and Motivations... that sort of thing.

alright, since most have stated it's a bad idea. I won't, but fiddleback's idea seems interesting

i have a few questions which keep slipping my mind, but i'll ask if i do remember them!

If you are GMing you shouldn't have a character adventuring, you run all the NPCs.

If your group takes it in turns to GM for the same party of adventurers, (we did that once in a western game), create your character exactly the same way as everyone else's. we had the rule, if you were GMing then your character was off somewhere else, doing something else that adventure.

I've run a PC in the group while also GMing. The way we do it is to not have that PC contribute to decisions, only skill checks. So (some other) PC says to my PC, "slice that computer". My PC simply obeys and rolls. Having him participate in conversations and decisions will skew the experience because you know what's coming up. But, if you let everyone else make the decisions and your PC is only there to roll dice, I don't think it hurts anything, imo.

Over the years, I've played in several small groups where it was basically given that the GM would play a character. This GM character is typically a silent partner of the group filling some roll that was missing from the other players. The GM character can never be the 'face' of the group though.

EOTE actually has a great way to do this. Droids. Droids start with 1 in everything, and can be built for any purpose. So you simply build the droid to fit the group. Players have a whole bunch of non-combatants? Make a combat droid to fill that need. Players have a bunch of combatants with no mechanical/medical skill? Make a medic droid that can dabble with mechanics. In the SW setting, that droid character can act as a interpreter too for your wookies and such that can't speak basic.

Again, I only suggest this as a way to fill the group. If you only have 2 players, this works well. If you have 3 players, this may not be needed at all. At 4 players there is no way I'd do it. While everyone wants to play, when the GM splits his/her attention between being the GM and playing a character, they will be FAR more likely to make mistakes, so only do it if needed.

Now if you are playing an NPC that is essential to the plot, thats a different story. It can be interesting if done right, but I wouldn't do it to start with. As a first time RPG player and GM, you'll be hard pressed to handle just the GM duties. Trying to play an important roll and GM will probably overwhelm you and may lead to a less enjoyable time for the players.

Also, never let your narrative character become the hero. I had a GM that did this all the time. He'd craft some huge elaberate adventure, then he'd create this amazing villian for us to fight, then he'd create some over the top cliche of a hero that would interact with the party from time to time. Eventually, we'd learn we were too weak to fight the villian, and along would come the hero character to have an epic battle with the villian. You see, the GM wrote this big story where the players were basically just eye witnesses to the action. We simply played the game to move the plot along for him to stroke his ego with his massively overpowered characters.

Our group has had a rotating GM for a long time. We usually maintain our own characters, and just give them equal value to the others for exp. We'll play them a bit while GMing, but they usually maintain a background roll. They're the one who guards the ship when others rush off to do the mission, or they get kidnapped and act as the prize to be rescued. That sort of thing. That way they can occasionally participate in the roll play aspects, but are out of the way for the fighting and heavy mechanics areas.

For an example, pity poor Saleena - while I was running the game, she wound up choking on a peanut, forcing the non-talking PC types to handle her smooth talking abilities last weekend. So yeah, you have to sometimes be a bit contrived from time to time - but it's not fair for the Temporary NPC to handle all the heavy lifting and steal the spotlight.

EOTE actually has a great way to do this. Droids. Droids start with 1 in everything, and can be built for any purpose. So you simply build the droid to fit the group. Players have a whole bunch of non-combatants? Make a combat droid to fill that need. Players have a bunch of combatants with no mechanical/medical skill? Make a medic droid that can dabble with mechanics. In the SW setting, that droid character can act as a interpreter too for your wookies and such that can't speak basic.

Yes, a Droid is the way to go if you want to play at the same time as you GM. If you plan on just rotating in every once and a while I'd go with a character that can pop in at any time, maybe with an obligation to the party? A character with their own small ship or something that conveniently bumps into the party at the spaceport bar kind of thing. Keep the character on par experience-wise so you don't out pace or drag down the party, just assume they've been doing other heroic things while their not around.

A bonus to having the character not around say guarding the ship is that the new GM can use them as a plot hook.

A bonus to having the character not around say guarding the ship is that the new GM can use them as a plot hook.

Unless the GM's part time PC gets kidnapped while guarding the ship so many times that it turns into a trope. You might want to use that one particular hook sparingly. . . . (: