One of our annual gaming conventions was held this weekend, so I figured it was about time I actually ran a game of EotE. It was an open game, not official, but it was still a great experience. Just thought I'd pass on a bit about what went on.
Since a lot of people still haven't played the game, I figured I'd run the beginner's box adventure (Escape from Mos Shuuta), and, if anyone was still interested, continue with Long Arm of the Hutt. I printed up some fliers to attract players. Then I printed out name and picture placards for each of the pregen's (including Sasha and Mathis) and put them in those little 3x4 plastic sign stands you can get at Office Depot. Each place setting had the sign and the pregen portfolio. For each encounter (combat or not) that had unique characters, I printed out similar 5x7 placards with visuals I culled from the internet and a blurb about the NPC or scene. Those, of course, went into 5x7 plastic sign stands and would be placed out when needed. Any maps from LAofH were printed out, sans text, and given to the players when they came across that area. [
Warning: Blatant Plug approaching
] For the combat encounters, I used the GM Tools of my char gen app. Believe it or not, I'd never actually used it in a game before
I was honestly shocked at how simple it was to create encounters. It took maybe 30 seconds to set up the simpler encounters; it took longer to print than it did to create. The sheets were also really easy to use during the encounter. I put them all in sheet protectors and used wet erase pens during the game. [
End of Blatant Plug
]
Anyway, the visuals attracted a number of people to the table, so we had a lot of lookie-loos along with the six players. Three of them actually took part in a Star Wars megagame from the night before (that was fun, too), so they were excited to be playing again. I did a little tutorial on the dice for the one or two that hadn't played before, and we started. They rolled for the destiny pool (they got all dark side pips), and I played the "Escape from Mos Shuuta" crawl for them from my iPhone (yup, there's an app for that)
The first adventure took about 4 1/2 hours to go through. It's a very simple adventure, but a lot of fun, very straightforward, and really evenly paced. It was a big hit, so we took a dinner break and started in on LAotH. It's a bit more complex, and the pacing wasn't quite as even as the first one. The biggest culprit was unfortunately the big role-playing opportunity: the Geonosian party. Granted, it was about midnight when we got to it, but only a couple of people actually participated. The other less animated got a little bored, to be honest. Annata was a lot of fun to GM, though
We got past that and decided to call it a night. We'd been playing for over 12 hours and they all wanted more!
So, we started up again this morning around 10 AM and finished off LAofH. The ending can be a bit anti-climactic because after all the work, the group really wanted a good fight. But, of course, I did have to remind them that it was fairly suicidal to confront Teemo the Hutt in his own palace
They opted for the "let Jabba deal with him" plan, but I did include a very cinematic ending at the landing pad, with them taking over the turret and blasting at the stream of thugs and Gamorreans coming after them, and, of course, being rescued at the last minute as Wex hovers the Lucky Guess over them and drops the loading ramp for them to leap in.
Deus ex machina
for the win!
After the game, a couple of the players, who are local to me, stayed for a few hours more and created real CRB characters. It was pretty amazing, actually, after over 12 hours on Sunday and another 4 more hours today, they were still amped about the game. We're going to be playing some more this coming weekend.
My feelings about the game: it's actually very easy to run, from a GM perspective. The players learned the dice mechanic very quickly and soon got into the narrative swing of things once they discovered they could be creative in their expenditure of triumphs and advantages. As for the GM getting weird requests from the players, it's also fairly simple to come up with an appropriate dice pool by just applying a skill, assigning a difficulty, determining whether or not its an opposed check, adding boosts or setbacks based on environmental conditions (or just pulling them out of your backside; as long as its descriptive, the players love it), and maybe flipping a dark-side destiny chit with appropriate menace and flare (queue "The Emperor's March" on the stereo) and upgrading the difficulty.
Combats run smoothly. Players really like having more than one slot to play with and to decide who goes first and who gets the boost dice. We played just as many combats with no maps and chits as we did using the maps and chits from the Beginner's box to equal effect, so the abstractness didn't bother anyone. For certain encounters, it would probably be beneficial to be able to map locations out, so the players know where things are and where to take cover. But I'd probably recommend doing this on an un-gridded map to help them avoid getting into a d20 mindset and counting squares or something
It's more important for them to picture the cinema and story of a battle, rather than trying to get too tactical and analytical about it.
The adversaries are even easier to deal with than D&D 4e monster stat blocks (which made 4e games soooo much easier to run), especially with the <cough> plug <cough> printed encounter sheets from the char gen. And the minion rules are a God send, especially when there's large groups of them.
These were starting games, so I didn't have any problems with huge dice pools, and while they fished a bit for boost dice
nobody really tried to take advantage of the system. They had quite a number of "epic moments" to remember as well, since the dice mechanic helps mentally legitimize ad hoc and improvised scenes and plans, so they really feel like they earned the success.
Anyway, I've probably rambled too much so I'll stop there. But a very positive and fun experience, and we're ready and raring to do it again this weekend!