I haven't played RPG's for 10+ years, but in that time I have read several articles on RPG's etc and tried to keep up to date, as before I was always GM'ing our D&D adventures. Now w/ Edge of the Empire I found myself in an odd situation...I'm a PC, something I've not really done before.

So, I've made my character, and run him through a few sessions so far. I have given him distinct physical characteristics that I refer to in game. I'm working on a small list of sayings he might use frequently in different settings to bring his character to life...

But I'm not finding the role as fulfilling as I thought I might, the urge to GM is beginning to burn, but I would rather really learn this side of the game. Yet most everything I am seeing applys mostly to the GM.

What tip's or pieces of advice do you have for me to really enjoy being ONLY one character, when I am used to being the world?

Also, since it has been so long since I've really played, GM's, what do you really enjoy in your PC's at the table? How can I be an asset to the GM as well as my fellow PC's?

I've only really gotten into 1 character in all my 10+ years of gaming, and that was because I made a very compelling & unique background that made sense for the character. Once you lose yourself and let the characters motivates/obligations work themselves you become alot more attached. Add in some cool play sessions and the fondness grows, especially with a cool group.

In your group you are a player, what is the balance between action & RP?

I'm usually the GM but from time-to-time my wife will run a game and I get to spread my player wings a bit. The last time, she ran a multipart Saga game (this was before EotE released), I really connected to my character in a way I haven't done in ages.

I started out in my usual manner. Built my character's stats, race, and class, then worked on a backstory. After that, I consulted with my wife on a decent hook. I built my character to be the pilot/face and that's how everyone intended for her to play, but through roleplaying the first few sessions. I found out she was doing a lot more than just talking to people and flying the ship. She was slicing computers and sneaking off and helping out an imperial spy (fellow party member).

In another words, this character, within 2 sessions of the game, evolved in ways I didn't intend. The character ended up showing me what she really was. I never intended her to be good at computers or mechanics, but the next level-up I took proficiencies in both those skills and took the saboteur prestige class (she ended up joining the imperial spy network). I even wrote short stories on how she knew a lot about computers. It was pretty neat.

Sorry for the personal anecdote. tl;dr: Use your backstory to help you come up with obligation and motivation, or vice versa, but also don't let it constrain you. Like me, you may find out your character is more than just a hired gun with a bounty. He may have been a Alderaanian security guard out on a diplomatic mission when the planet was destroyed killing your wife and 2 kids.

During the session you find you keep relying on skulduggery. Which you just realized, you must have picked up from the band of pirates you joined during that dark time in your life when you kept daring yourself to stupid stuff trying to get yourself killed. Good thing you sobered up and left them with the getting was good. Unfortunately they still haven't forgiven you. That bounty hunter back on Ord Mantel told you that much.

Take all that GM'ing experience and put it to work! You've (presumably) had experience tracking the motivations and plans of a dozen or more NPCs simultaneously. As a player, you can use this experience to more readily understand the actions of the NPCs you encouter. Figure out how events and characters are connected, so that you're more engaged and more prepared.

You know the kinds of things of players do that make it easier or harder, more or less enjoyable, to be a GM. If the group is stuck, come up with the kind of hairbrained scheme you (as a GM) might have concocted to put the PC's in this position, then try to get out of it. If you're right, you've defeated the villain. If you're wrong, potentially disastrous consequences befall the party, but either way you should get plenty of laughs as shenanigans ensue. Just remember that the goal is to have fun and tell a story, not defeat a rival GM.

I've only really gotten into 1 character in all my 10+ years of gaming, and that was because I made a very compelling & unique background that made sense for the character. Once you lose yourself and let the characters motivates/obligations work themselves you become alot more attached. Add in some cool play sessions and the fondness grows, especially with a cool group.

In your group you are a player, what is the balance between action & RP?

The bolded part is great advice, learning how to really flesh out and let a character come alive is the unique challange I'm hoping to get here. I believe that down the road it will make me a better GM too.

Our group is made up of mostly new RPG'ers so currently it tends to be very action based, but the general feel at the table is an increased desire to move closer to the RP/narritive playstyle. Most of us are normally efficient euro boardgame players.

I'm usually the GM but from time-to-time my wife will run a game and I get to spread my player wings a bit. The last time, she ran a multipart Saga game (this was before EotE released), I really connected to my character in a way I haven't done in ages.

I started out in my usual manner. Built my character's stats, race, and class, then worked on a backstory. After that, I consulted with my wife on a decent hook. I built my character to be the pilot/face and that's how everyone intended for her to play, but through roleplaying the first few sessions. I found out she was doing a lot more than just talking to people and flying the ship. She was slicing computers and sneaking off and helping out an imperial spy (fellow party member).

In another words, this character, within 2 sessions of the game, evolved in ways I didn't intend. The character ended up showing me what she really was. I never intended her to be good at computers or mechanics, but the next level-up I took proficiencies in both those skills and took the saboteur prestige class (she ended up joining the imperial spy network). I even wrote short stories on how she knew a lot about computers. It was pretty neat.

Sorry for the personal anecdote. tl;dr: Use your backstory to help you come up with obligation and motivation, or vice versa, but also don't let it constrain you. Like me, you may find out your character is more than just a hired gun with a bounty. He may have been a Alderaanian security guard out on a diplomatic mission when the planet was destroyed killing your wife and 2 kids.

During the session you find you keep relying on skulduggery. Which you just realized, you must have picked up from the band of pirates you joined during that dark time in your life when you kept daring yourself to stupid stuff trying to get yourself killed. Good thing you sobered up and left them with the getting was good. Unfortunately they still haven't forgiven you. That bounty hunter back on Ord Mantel told you that much.

Personal stories are often more helpful than advice out of context, thank you. These were excellent examples of letting the character really come alive.

Take all that GM'ing experience and put it to work! You've (presumably) had experience tracking the motivations and plans of a dozen or more NPCs simultaneously. As a player, you can use this experience to more readily understand the actions of the NPCs you encouter. Figure out how events and characters are connected, so that you're more engaged and more prepared.

You know the kinds of things of players do that make it easier or harder, more or less enjoyable, to be a GM. If the group is stuck, come up with the kind of hairbrained scheme you (as a GM) might have concocted to put the PC's in this position, then try to get out of it. If you're right, you've defeated the villain. If you're wrong, potentially disastrous consequences befall the party, but either way you should get plenty of laughs as shenanigans ensue. Just remember that the goal is to have fun and tell a story, not defeat a rival GM.

And there is a unique challenge, avoiding comparing how I would run the game, and instead just focusing on how I should play the character. It's a unique challenge I'm finding, and your advice is very solid for helping me in my task. Thank you.

Thank you to all those who have taken the time to comment so quickly. You are appreciated.

Backstory, backstory, backstory! (mechanically known as obligation and motivation) I tend to play leader types in other games, so I had a little difficulty keeping him from trying to run the group. After a few attempts at trying to be more social, and pretty bad dice rolls, I found myself thinking more and more like Gand the wannabe Findsman. He now fits his place nicely, and with a little narrative, he is now a lot of fun to play.

Something that our GM does that allows us some more immersion with our character is that he informs us as to how much downtime there will be between sessions. He then encourages us to send him emails as to what we want our characters to be doing in the 3-10 days that was spent between sessions. Some of the players are up to some pretty interesting things that will have implications story wise, others take a more casual approach and win / lose money at the "parlor".

I GM a lot for my group of players. Next to this group, I found another group to play with, and like Kaosoe in a few sessions my character grew out of my expectations.

I'm playing a surviving Mandalorian, he managed to survive being a bounty hunter and a mechanic. He was beeing very silent in the beginning, not wanting to bond with the other PCs. As the sessions started to flow, he got chattier and started even giving orders. He lives very closely to his honour code and recently found himself beeing nominated by the other PCs, the team's captain (Wich I would have never imagined before). After a few sessions missed by our gm, he started doing individual sessions, in which we can make our character grow and give them depth.

This worked beyond my wildest dreams, I started to write down our adventures and dedicated chapters for my character. I currently have 150 pages fully redacted and about 60 pages for my own character.

And as far as I imagine, I would have never imagined my character going this far.

Conclusion? Rping and Motivation/Obligation are great way to feel our character and bond with him. If your GM agrees, you can even make him play through small individual sessions. This allows the character to be in a different and generally a bit more personnal situation that's probably linked to his backstory a way or another.

Getting attached to your character, as others have said, is really important. For me, the way I tend to get attached is to map out his future. Being invested in the character's future makes you invested in the character now. Further, it can provide some detail as to what kind of person your character is, as I explain below.

I always plan out characters from level 1-20, or in the case of EotE, I have planned out what talents and skills I want to take and in what order. Especially with skills, it doesn't have to be set in stone, but the benefits are three-fold. 1) You don't need to agonize over what to take each time you gain xp, saving you time 2) from a mechanical perspective, planning for the future can be much more efficient when purchasing talents 3) from a roleplay perspective, knowing roughly where your character is going in terms of mechanical development can help flesh out who he is now. It can show his goals and ambitions for example, as well as his priorities.

One way you, using your experience as a gm, can help other players is to get a firm grasp of the rules. Don't go overboard with the advice of course, but you can remind your fellow players about options they have they might be forgetting, like taking strain to take an extra maneuver or spending a destiny point.

Odd advice for an RPG, but win.

I never know who my character is until they've accomplished a few things, no matter how small. After they've had a few victories I know which meant the most to them, and thus what they truly care about.

How do you know your character hates bullies? Protect someone. (Feel good about yourself?)

Does your character need revenge? Inconvenience your enemy. (Satisfied? Need to go further?)

Do they want a better life? Smuggle something precious. (Do you want to keep it?)

Outside of all the immersive advice the others have suggested, I'd also add that you've got skills that th others, being new players, don't.

Having been a player in many a game, I decided to switch with our normal GM and let him get in some play time. But i use his skills and expierence constantly. There have been multiple occasions when I've given him an NPC to play. One scene wasn't really all that important to me, just a shopping run, that through thei rinteractions turned into a drug deal! it certainly wasn't what I'd intended, but the party waas engaged, we were having fun, so I let them play the run out. Two sessions later I wove the story I've got going on back into things and it was a very memorable expierence.

Talk to your GM. Offer your help. If the person running is a bit light on description, offer to expand upon it.

NEGOTIATE! Use your abilities to generate aditional contacts / events / history for yourself and the other players.

Lots of great advice here. It's really helping me to see how much more I can do, and gave me a better idea of how to talk w/ my GM about the game as well. Thank you all for your time and shared experience.

Outside of all the immersive advice the others have suggested, I'd also add that you've got skills that th others, being new players, don't.

Having been a player in many a game, I decided to switch with our normal GM and let him get in some play time. But i use his skills and expierence constantly. There have been multiple occasions when I've given him an NPC to play. One scene wasn't really all that important to me, just a shopping run, that through thei rinteractions turned into a drug deal! it certainly wasn't what I'd intended, but the party waas engaged, we were having fun, so I let them play the run out. Two sessions later I wove the story I've got going on back into things and it was a very memorable expierence.

Talk to your GM. Offer your help. If the person running is a bit light on description, offer to expand upon it.

NEGOTIATE! Use your abilities to generate aditional contacts / events / history for yourself and the other players.

I spoke w/ my GM about this last night, and it's good to see it's been successful with other groups in the past.

Getting attached to your character, as others have said, is really important. For me, the way I tend to get attached is to map out his future. Being invested in the character's future makes you invested in the character now. Further, it can provide some detail as to what kind of person your character is, as I explain below.

I always plan out characters from level 1-20, or in the case of EotE, I have planned out what talents and skills I want to take and in what order. Especially with skills, it doesn't have to be set in stone, but the benefits are three-fold. 1) You don't need to agonize over what to take each time you gain xp, saving you time 2) from a mechanical perspective, planning for the future can be much more efficient when purchasing talents 3) from a roleplay perspective, knowing roughly where your character is going in terms of mechanical development can help flesh out who he is now. It can show his goals and ambitions for example, as well as his priorities.

One way you, using your experience as a gm, can help other players is to get a firm grasp of the rules. Don't go overboard with the advice of course, but you can remind your fellow players about options they have they might be forgetting, like taking strain to take an extra maneuver or spending a destiny point.

This advice has proved to be very helpful. I sat down last night and started to do this and it really helped me get attached to my character more. I called my GM and talked about his vision for the game so I could build in a common direction, and then saw ways that I could develop my character and help shape the story by communicating to him skills, and items that I wanted my character to get, but in the story not just by spending points.

I have also started to open a dialouge with the other players that hopefully will help them do the same.

It's very interesting how much of a different mindset goes into being a PC, yet when done right in a spirit of cooperation it really does feel like it's going to make the whole game a richer experience.

Again, Thank You all for your time and advice.