Just a simple question: what have you used for your first/intro session? Did you make your own adventure, or did you use one of the adventures produced by FFG?

I'm just curious where people stand on this and why, especially since I'm debating what to throw my poor, poor party into for a one-shot session.

If you care to elaborate, I'm curious to hear what game you've run and how it panned out in the end.

I'm looking forward to hearing what you've all done so far!

For our very first adventure, well - it was kind of a mix. The first night, a pre-game "lets learn the character creation" night, I brought along the Beginners Boxed Set where we played just the combat sections - the cantina, the alley with the stormtroopers and the fight in the hanger. Then we switched to a completely original game to get the characters introduced and followed it up with Long Arm of the Hutt, with the set up to the game changed around to fit what had come before.

However, the players wound up heading to Tatooine and angering Teemo the Hutt, so I just said "remember the stuff we did a couple of nights ago? That happens here" and we went on with the rest of the game.

Honestly I think the Beginners Game / Long Arm of the Hutt is a great starting point for people new to the game. It's a bit railroad-y, but a great tutorial and intro into the game mechanics. I would recommend everyone start there.

We used the pregens throughout the beginner game and my players liked them so much they more or less recreated them using the core rules for our continuing saga. I would agree the beginner set kinda railroads the story but it's for a good reason (learn the rules) but my players proceeded to get on the train and just drive it wherever the hell they wanted, rails be damned. I of course encouraged this.

We used the beginner's box and the pregens there, even though I have the core.

In the end, the beginner's box really did a good job of easing players into the characters, the stats, combat, and skill checks.

I only have the core rulebook, so I've only been able to read the adventure written there. It does cover the basics of various things, including social rolls, combat, and even starship combat, so that's a plus.

I'm just not horribly impressed with the adventure itself due to the railroading involved and the forced interactions. That could just be me, though.

I only have the core rulebook, so I've only been able to read the adventure written there. It does cover the basics of various things, including social rolls, combat, and even starship combat, so that's a plus.

I'm just not horribly impressed with the adventure itself due to the railroading involved and the forced interactions. That could just be me, though.

One of my players and I had already played the beginner's game adventure, so I rewrote it for my group.

They were working for Bolba The Hutt when one of his lieutenants, Durrant, plans a coup. Bolba finds out and launches a pre-emptive strike. The character's names are given to Bolba as traitors involved in the coup. (The players were allowed to decide whether they were or if rivals had lied about them)

The adventure started in media res, with the characters hiding in a rented safe room looking for a way of Kajarik III. The equipment and credits they had were all they managed to grab from their homes before Bolba's goons had come hunting for them.

There were 2 ships planned in he adventure for them to steal, Bolba's luxury yacht, docked near to his palace or a smuggling freighter the characters knew was at a secret landing pad in the jungle, undergoing repairs.

The players decided to go for the safer option of the freighter, tangled with a group of Bolba's goons, flipped a destiny point and took the goon's speeder. They headed out of the city, got into a chase and gunfight with more goons. Got away, then got lost in the jungle. Set up camp, the watch rolled badly and had an encounter with some wildlife (that they cleverly fed to stop them attacking) then eventually found the landing pad. Fought/ ran off the repair crew. Patched up the ship and took off just as a couple of snub fighters turned up. They fought off the fighters then jumped to Nar Shaddaa, a destination they picked.

I only have the core rulebook, so I've only been able to read the adventure written there. It does cover the basics of various things, including social rolls, combat, and even starship combat, so that's a plus.

I'm just not horribly impressed with the adventure itself due to the railroading involved and the forced interactions. That could just be me, though.

Note that the Beginner Game is designed to railroad players, in order to teach them the basic mechanics of the game. It's like playing a tutorial level in a video game. I told my players (who were mostly fairly experienced with Saga Edition) that this was the case, and they gave the adventure the benefit of the doubt and rolled with it. Fun times were had by all, and it was the easiest adventure I've ever run as a GM

I also used the beginners set yesterday. We built own characters and used the adventure as tutorial. A great way to come up with the game system and mechanics. We enjoyed it very much and it was extreme thrilling in the end. My players survived the Tie-Fighter struggle with a 2 pointed hull. Also exciting for me, cause there was a great danger, that they got the final shot before the hyperdrive could be activated. But that's the way it has to be! Can't wait for the next weekend

I ran the Beginner's Box adventure twice for two different groups.

One group was entirely new, so I had them use the pre-gens (as well as including the two additional ones from the website). The players didn't seem quite as enthused, particularly as none of the characters had anything really special aside from their skill ranks. Given most of them are well-versed in 3.X and 4e versions of D&D, I think the lack of anything akin to "feats" or "class abilities" was partly to blame, but also the fact that they really didn't have a lot of investment in the characters. They had no interest in playing Long Arm of the Hutt with these characters, but that was also due to most of them just really not grooving on the system.

The second group I allowed to make their own characters using the EotE Beta rulebook + Final Week Updates, as I'd already run an adventure for most of them (my conversion of "Rendezvous at Ord Mantell") several weeks prior. This time around, the players were much more interested and invested in their characters, and built them to include at least a couple talents to give them something to truly set them apart from the other players. We did play through part of Long Arm of the Hutt, but the group's interest waned after the first Act and partway into the second Act, but that was more an issue with the adventure in question.

I'd say that unless you are only going to be running a true one-shot adventure, give the players the option to make their own characters. There's two good chargen programs (one's an Excel spreadsheet by bren_waynaro, the other is a stand-alone program by OggDude) that can make the process a good deal less painful for a new player, and you've hooked them in a bit more by giving them a character they have at least some investment in, something that's been an issue that I've seen more than once when just handing out pregen characters.

I'm trying the free RPG day adventure for my group. It looks shorter than these other ones, so good for a quick determination of whether to continue or not.