With 2 veteran rpg players and 3 players that were new to RPGing.

We had a blast... It took 4 hours and it was a great way to introduce the system. I found that having read the rulebook I still needed to look up quite a few things but all in all it was fast, fun and everyone enjoyed it.

The highlight was the crew taking off with Trex on board and the bountyhunter trying to shoot the pilot but dropping his weapon during the evasive manouvers while still in the gravity well of Tatooine and then being obliterated by the wookie.

I look forward to more sessions with this group!

The only criticism I would have is that encounter 5 (Stormtroopers) was supposed to be a difficult encounter but the party members actually killed them off quite easily...

You know how the minion group skills work right? 2 minion group of 3 stormtroopers arent exactly easy kills. Yellow+yellow+green Ranged(heavy) 9 dmg blaster rifles and 5 soak.

Also, you dont remove a minion until wound threshold is EXCEEDED, not met. So first trooper doesnt die til 6 dmg is done to group.

I know, I did and I know.

Our wookie charged and killed the first trooper outright with his vibro. Our bounty hunter took cover and shot the second one dead in one shot and the third wasn't so hot anymore after that.

This was in the first round!

The comple party of 4 didn't have a lot of trouble offing the second minion group after that (eventhough the wookie got quite a beating in the process) and it would have felt very artificial if I had a third group show up after that.

Come to think of it, I guess they were a bit lucky as well...

The beginner game is set up for the players to succeed, so that would be a factor. It's not indicative of the core game itself.

Anyway, glad you had a blast

Yeah I am aware of that, however this specific encouter was added to teach characters to flee instead of fight.

But yeah, it was awesome.

All players in the session have decided to stick together and become a regular player group. We are creating characters for them the coming 2 weeks and then we will delve into Beyond the Rim!

Looks like you had a blast with it!

I just finished running the first half of it for some younger folks I know. They're all relatively new to roleplaying (we had played some Pathfinder in the past). They all caught on very fast and started having a lot of fun with it. We had a lot of creative thinking going on. One of my players managed to acquire the hypermatter reactor igniter for a crazy price by intentionally breaking something while he inspected it, then fixing it again later after he had haggled down the price and bought it.

I did struggle in some parts of course, especially when one of the vetaran players suggested a party split twice(!) during the game, eventhough I had specifically stated that because I wanted to familiarize myself with the rules as much as they wanted to I would not allow it during the beginner game.

I started off being really clear about this to everyone (and I think that is a good way to play the beginner game, at least ait was for me); "During this session there will not be as many freedoms as you will usually have and there might be times when I will be less eager to say "yes" or "yes, but..." and tell you "no" then during future sessions but that is only so we learn to play the game in the right way. I want to play the entire beginner game this afternoon so let's get cracking"

I doubted whether I would do this before we started but in fact this was the perfect way to familiarize myself with the rules and tone of the game and all in all, in hours and hours of playing, I only had to say "no" 3 times. All of them to the same player and two of those were because I disallowed a party split.

It's very true that the beginner game requires quite a bit of railroading in order to keep the players on track with the adventure and manage to teach the game effectively. I did close to the same thing as you did. When my players successfully evaded the gamorreans, they wanted to just hide it out and wait for them to leave. I had to tell them that fighting the gamorreans was an integral part in teaching the game, so they had to just roll with it.

Glad you and your group had a blast (haha, get it?). Consider starting an Obsidian Portal (free) to track your campaign!