So I'm the President of my campus' Role Playing Club (I'll save the story of my bloodless coup is for another time)

Yesterday I attempted running the Beginner Box. This was my second time ever attempting to run a game, and the first one went pretty badly (though to my defense, I TOLD the group the game was not ready yet).

We stumbled through the Cantina scene, pausing often to double check the rules. While I had read through the book previously, I tend to forget things easily, especially when on the spot. That, and I could never figure out what to do with the Advantages beyond refunding Strain. There was a fun bit with Oskara rolling high enough (with a Triumph!) that I let her punch through the first Gamorrean and take out a second (using the rules for minion groups, I had to do it!).

Then they get to the junk shop to collect the pilot light for the hyperdrive and the guy playing 41-Vex started plotting to rob the shopkeeper. Later, after having successfuly made Overseer Brynn surrender and free the ship, he started to demand heading back to the junk shop to kill the old man (who was MEAN to DROIDS) and free the enslaved R5. One of his justifications was that the droid could work on the ship they were about to steal, or that they could sell it later. Yeah, way to promote droid rights.To put an end to his premeditated homicide I just interrupted it with the scheduled Stormtrooper encouter.

"Look, there they are! And that droid we are looking for!"

The other real "What the heck?" moment was, after having successfully entered the starport control through the side entrance, the Wookie decided to walk up to Overseer Brynn and start a conversation. To the complete objection of the rest of the group. I tried to help, pointing out he was probably the only Wookie in Mos Shuuta, not to mention all of Tatooine (Chewbacca would be off doing Rebellion things with Han). That and the fact he spoke Shyriiwook and Overseen Brynn did not, but he managed to drag the afformentioned homicadal 41-Vex with him as a translator. Inconspicuous, thy name is Lowhhrick.

Before Brynn could set the alarm, the droid drops a stun grenade and managed to bring Brynn down to a single wound (having no strain) and I managed to convince the group that the advancing droids with weapons armed were more a threat than the nearly incapacitated Overseer. Another homicide averted.

I think for the most part the group had plenty of ideas, but that they either went against common sense or else overcomplicated their attempts at deception. For example, wanting to get into the Docking Bay by offering Lowhhrick to Trex.

"Teemo the Hutt has asked us to offer you this Wookie for you to hunt! Also, we have the part your ship requires."

"The Wookie? I would relish a chance to- how did you know I needed a part?"

I may continue with Long Arm of the Hutt with them next weekend, or weasel out of that by offering to let another group try Escape from Mos Shuuta.

And I am a fan of all things weasel.

"

Congratulations on your take-over of the group. Let's hope your reign remains bloodless.

We used to joke about bribing the GM with snacks when you wanted to try something and be sure it worked. After college it changed more and more to offering drinks. NOW when my players tell me what they intend to do, I just say "hand me the aspirin."

Sounds like your crew are pretty creative, I'll give them that. It also sounds like you did a good job thinking on your feet. But the main reason I'm liking your post is the title alone. That about sums up GMing, right there.

Sounds like you have a group of immature role players that are not reading very deep into their characters and their CHARACTRERS MOTIVATIONS, not thei own person desires.

A droid whose goal is to upgrade his systems is not going to do things that run a high risk of getting him caught, destroyed, enslaved.

Yup. I see the one who played 41-Vex as an issue as a future player. But at the same time, he is the one who donated the Beginner Box to the club.

The one who played the Wookie maybe trouble if he keeps thinking a Wookiee can strut into a secure area and expect no one to think this is out of the ordinary, especially when he's trying to get Overseer Brynn to leave the command center (or maybe just drag her into the closet) by saying he is a messenger from Teemo, who I stated she never had business with before (or at least not directly).

The guy running Oskara had never played any RPGs before last semester and while he is still learning he seems pretty level-headed. He's a pretty nice guy.

The guy running Pash had enough common sense to try and stay out of the starport control room while the Wookie tried his thing. I might let him play in a future campain I run if he plays with a clear head, but I'm undecided with him.

And a guy who picked up Mathus after we were underway (they ran into him in the docking bay, working on the ship) is kind of weird and spent most of his time piddling on his Nintendo DS.

I may make these guys complete Long Arm of the Hutt before I decide to let them play in a campaign I create, make it part of an audition process. If I'm going to put work into something like this, I don't want it getting majorly derailed.

Yeah, Diggles, the extremes of certain fandoms seem populated with the most socially awkward people imaginable (I'm not saying I'm excluded) and I don't plan to play with some of them if I can avoid it.

For example, one of the guys in the role playing club tended to be entire selfish and sexist. And that's before he got to his characters. The first game I played with him he nearly died twice in the session due to runnign into a room to loot and setting off traps before anyone else could say a word.

In another campaign, he apparently made an undead lich necromancer who apparently went around and used some spell on all the other player characters to make them his servants and do his bidding. As the conclusion for that campaign, the GMs (they had two who alternated for their twelve-player game) and players organized a giant miniature battle using a combination of rules and models from Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k to represent a fight between their futuristic army (summoned by a wish) and an army of angels.

...there is a reason I'm going to be picky about my players, especially when I'm estimating to have at least 30 students in the club by next Saturday. On the other hand, I know of some responsible role players in the current pool, but most of them were absent from yesterday's meeting.

We used to joke about bribing the GM with snacks when you wanted to try something and be sure it worked. After college it changed more and more to offering drinks. NOW when my players tell me what they intend to do, I just say "hand me the aspirin."

I need to remind my group that you need to feed the GM! I got used to that in College!

About your group, you might want to let them run as they intend, but beware of the consequences.

My group is composed of a 15 yo boy (Pash), a 27 yo guy (Oskara) and myself(GM, Vex and Lowrick). When they ran through the Beginner's box, They got to the spaceport, got a thriumph (blew the computers, releasing all the docking bay locks and shutting down the spaceport), yet Oskara continued the fight to kill the overseerer. When they moved away, I told him, you do realized that you killed someone even though you didn't need to, you could have got away at that point, noone knew what you were doing there, the computers were offline.

In D&D you kill everything, in Star Wars, you don't need to kill all NPCs, they could have used the Stun setting. It changed at that point, somehow they realized this wasn't the same game!

As for VEX wanting to kill the shopkeeper, maybe there are witnesses, this would bring him obligation.

The Stormtroopers was a good idea, but a discussion with the players might be in order.

In another group, one of my player has the attitude that he has to find a way to derail the game. However, he does, sometimes, have good ideas:

- They were being chased by Stormtroopers (A BUNCH!), they only needed to last 2 rounds, as they were running in the streets. However, the very first round, that PC (a Droid as well), stopped pulled out its arm and warned the stormtrooper that it was a thermal grenade. I went along, really derailing the game, but it was too fun to let it pass.

In the end, the stormtroopers stopped, then he ran away. (got shot, but survived).

It's not always easy coming up with how to deal with unexpected ideas from players, but you'll get better the more you play!

I may make these guys complete Long Arm of the Hutt before I decide to let them play in a campaign I create, make it part of an audition process. If I'm going to put work into something like this, I don't want it getting majorly derailed.

In my experience, the most memorable nights of gaming tend to be the one where the players manage to utterly derail the carefully detailed plans of the GM. Not all of them by any measure, but most. One measure of a good GM is how well he 'rolls with the punches' when the players come up with utterly unexpected solutions to problems.

Some example's I've dealt with:

In the Saga Edition 'Dawn of Defiance' campaign, the very first adventure took 4 sessions to work through and involved an ill advised raid on the station's stormtrooper barracks, the utter destruction of the minor crime boss droid who it turns out was a key part of at least 3 later adventures in the series.

I worked though that minor disaster by utilizing a concept I'd had for a droid PC I wanted to play. A massive remote droid brain which controlled other droid 'shells' to interact with the world. Suffice it to say, they were a bit confused when they were confronted by Switch again. He wasn't particularly upset, but he *did* demand that the party repay him the cost of replacing that particular shell. With interest.

When I ran Escape from Mos Shutta for my group, they decided to wait out Trex, and spent *days* hiding in the control room of his landing bay waiting for him to leave the ship. They got loose from the landing clamps by carefully 'altering' them with a tool kit. To top it off, they downed the security droids and Trex over the course of 2 rounds. As a result, they never ran into the stormtroopers, except as some flavor as the troopers entered the landing bay just as the party was lifting off in their newly stolen ship.

If I were to run it again, I'd make a point of letting the players know that Trex has been grounded by Teemo for the forseeable future, so waiting him out isn't going to do them any good. It may well be *months* before Trex goes anywhere.

And, an example I've caused myself:

In another Saga game, the GM had a multi-session plot line involving tracking down a 'rogue Jedi' who was robbing banks and proving that he was just a common thief who happened to end up in possession of a lightsaber. My character, an alternative tradition essentially doing a 'foreign exchange' program with the New Jedi Order, found a very simple solution to the 'prove the Jedi aren't behind it' problem. Every lightsaber is hand-crafted. That means every lightsaber is unique, with slightly different color, flicker rates, hums, etc. As a result, the lightsabers can be 'fingerprinted'. A registry of lightsaber 'fingerprints' was created, and compared against the holorecordings of the robberies. As a result, they could determine that it was *not* a lightsaber currently in use by a Jedi. With that done, we had the basic trust of the sector law enforcement, so we could continue doing our 'FBI-like' duties, and they could continue to track down the robber. Several weeks worth of game went right out the window in the course of 15 minutes of discussion, and the entire mess culminated in one encounter a few weeks later when the GM decided that the sector rangers had managed to figure out who the fellow was. We went in with overwhelming force, and had the guy stunned out before we hit his initiative slot.

Of course, that was the same game where the we kept eliminating the main bad guys much earlier than the GM ever anticipated. As he put it, when we saw a member of the group of main baddies, we 'clamped on like a pack of pit bulls, and didn't let go until the guy was down'. (He had the habit of regularly throwing groups at us that were easily 10-15 CR above our level, so we figured that if we *didn't* do that we were just going to get ourselves killed.)

I wish you the best of luck going forward. May you have *many* memorable gaming sessions yet to come.

I would not stress, this may be situation normal for a new group.

As Voice spoke of, my most enjoyment as a GM is setting up a planned story then getting to see what really ends up happening as it goes completely off rails.

My most recent example involved some scoundrel type players I assumed would do odd scroundel type jobs until eventually being enlisted by the good guy rebels. The campaign veered completely off course when my players ended up working secretly for an Imperial intelligence officer. It was great fun for all.

Like others said as the beginner box has a one-shot vibe people will tend to mess around. Though if you plan to play long term I'd recommend sitting down with the group and establish some ground rules and get a feel for how serious they want the game run.

I would have no problem with a campaign getting derailed, I just hope I could compensate for it properly and without having to stop to think too much.

No, I would rather have serious role players than people who simply decide to defy character background and common sense to do something ridiculous.

For example, in one of the club's Pathfinder games the party was making their way through a cavern when a dragon appeared and told them not to continue in that direction by penalty of the kinds of things dragons are want to do. The rest of the party stopped and immediately changed directions, but one character decided that they were going to keep on walking because no one tells them what to do. Cue dragon lightning breath taking the player out in one massive strike. Having joined the game late, I missed the previous session where that player had also made it a point to go out of their way and defy the 'nobles' in the party. The party consisting entirely of Drow, that's generally a bad idea.

That one greedy/sexist guy I mentioned before always had a habit in his games of planning from the beginning to overthrow whatever ruling society was in place and start his own Empire. I don't think it helps that most of the club is fresh out of High School meanwhile I'm ten years older than the majority of the club.

I would love for people to take a serious approach to gaming with the occasional bad or unexpected idea, but not people who make it their goal in the game to make things as difficult for everyone else as possible. I do fully intend to go over some ground rules for any game I run, that everyone needs to be mature and take the game serious if they plan to be in for any length of time.

I had thought of making the R5 unit roll off blaring an alarm when the players killed the shop keeper, but I remembered that the Stormtroopers were about, first. It was also a ridiculous situation, because 41-Vex decided to use a negotiate or coerce roll against the Wookiee to convince him to go along with the plan. In hindsight, neither character was really negotiating and the Wookiee could have just ignored the entire conversation if he wanted.

I did enjoy their approach to the docking bay. Nevermind that the map clearly showed 'Maintenance Entrance' on it, the players wanted to go in the front door and one of them had the bright idea to offer up the Wookie. I decided to let Trex's greed for hunting Wookies win over, and it helped that 41-Vex decided to 'sedate' the Wookie with a low dose of tranquilizer or painkiller or something. I told him that there would be side effects because he said he was still injecting the Wookiee, even with a low dose, but I let the Wookiee roll for Resilience and he passed so gained no handicaps, so Trex had the players drag the Wookiee onto the ship under guard by him and the two ramp droids. 41-Vex asked to use the control room to contact Teemo and announce receipt of the delivery and as the rest of the group made their way to the ship Mathus (who had been working on the underside of the ship) following him up and asked what was going on. After everyone else was on the ship, 41-Vex closed the docking bay doors to seal out the other droids and then he and Mathus ran to the base of the ramp. Alerted to door issues by the other droids, Trex stopped the group on the ship and started down the ramp when one of the two players outside used their Comlink to signal the group inside, and then the Wookie grabbed his Vibroaxe and lunged at one of the guard droids. As Trex was starting his way back up the ramp Mathus shot him from behind, with a really great shot with enough advantages that Trex took one to the leg, fell and rolled down the ramp. 41-Vex and Mathus ran inside and raised the ramp and helped the others take out the two droids while Pash runs the long way around the inside of the Krayt Fang to get to the cockpit and launch.

It's always fun when you have a creative group. I mean, the headaches are tremendous, and if you can't keep up, then you regret all of your decisions, but man, I'd love to have a group that wasn't just a kill 'em all murder hobo and a quiet go with the flow kid. If I had been in your group, I'd tell VEX that he had my support all the way. Screw some old man mistreating droids and denying me my hyperdrive reactor! Let's show him some justice.

Of course, this just causes headaches that cause cut ins from good GMs like yourself.

I have had many an adventure of terrible misfortune. I tried some games with two kids at school in our RPG club, but I plan to try an Escape from Mos Shuuta game where they make personal characters and we use more people (but I might have difficulties with how one of them has already played it). I hope they don't go insane this time.

I fully intend to make a campaign where I put players in a situation that causes massive amounts of collateral damage.

"Well, you picked up that reactor part you needed to power your new secret base, but unfortunately it was a crucial part holding that cloud city airborne."

Or Imperials give them a choice that gives a great reward but results in an entire planet being decimated.

You know, things to help them sleep at night.

And I am a fan of all things weasel.

I I have nothing to add other than I approve.

I fully intend to make a campaign where I put players in a situation that causes massive amounts of collateral damage.

"Well, you picked up that reactor part you needed to power your new secret base, but unfortunately it was a crucial part holding that cloud city airborne."

Or Imperials give them a choice that gives a great reward but results in an entire planet being decimated.

You know, things to help them sleep at night.

Well if I play with the group I have in mind, the guy who normally GMs things tries to get everyone squeamish about things and throws up a disclaimer for his games that if he brings up any repressed memories that you should let him know to stop his game.

And if I find out they're willingly taking those options and laughing maniacally then I'll know to change it up and task them with guarding a herd of bunnies or something.

I played the wookiee the first time we played.

I talked to the overseer, too.

She didn't understand a word I said.

But she was brilliantly distracted by my full song and dance routine with helpful illustrative hand gestures.

While Mathus rigged the computers.

A player of mine seduced the overseer and tried to ram the TIE fighters.

You're doing it right.

Let the dice help tell the story and say yes, or yes but, and you'll be OK