Running my first game- ever- and want some advice from the masters!

[SteelEagle 46]

Hi there!

I started roleplaying earlier this year in Edge of the Empire and love the system, and what an introduction as it was my first roleplaying experience ever. Now I want to run a game and I feel confident that the ideas I have and the work I've done so far should make for a good time for my players. However, I am nothing if not a nervous nellie when I try new things, and I've got some things on my mind.

To start it- how much do you generally prep for one session? I have a few pages of statted out material, and I even have flavor dialogue written out. But I don't know how long it may take my potential players to go through. I am aiming for 2-3 hours. In your experience, what does that generally entail from a planning stage?

[2P51 32,611]

Do you want to wrap up everything in a single session a night?  I think you'll find the modular encounters in the sourcebooks helpful.  They tend to take about a session each, some could be lengthier depending, some might finish up quicker, but they give you a good idea of the amount of encounters you need to fill an evening's session.

[SteelEagle 46]

It will be part of a long-running campaign. I just want to make sure that the sessions don't run entirely too long or too short, and was wandering what that entails prep wise and encounter wise in your experience.

Okay, so look at those. That could work as a nice base. Any good suggestions for ones to peek at? 

Edited September 18, 2015 by SteelEagle

[2P51 32,611]

Like I said, those modular encounters are a good benchmark for one session worth of stuff.

 

In regards to how much prepping, that's entirely up to you.  I have been running my guys on Nal Hutta in an episodic one mission, one session kind of a format now.  It keeps the amount I have to do simple per session.  

 

I tend to come up with missions with the basic premise, like corporate espionage.  

 

Then my idea turns into their contact puts them in touch with a freelance corporate spy who needs some of them to help distract at a social gathering in a company skyscraper, others need to move off unnoticed and disable the security grid, and the entry team has to sky chute to the buildings exterior and make entry from outside to steal what they need.  

 

I jot that all down as bullet points to have the idea laid out.  I make names for my NPCs and pick an accent, I like doing voices.  I lay out where they meet and talk terms, draw a couple quick maps for reference, and think up what the 'reward' might be in game, just credits, a ship deed, a skyline repulsor apartment, etc.  

 

It doesn't take terribly long and the sourcebooks provide the fluff for the setting and background. There is so much material online for various locations there is no need to re-write what someone else already has.

[Blackbird888 4,106]

GM work is equal parts preparation and improvising. Sort of. It depends on how your group does things. If you find they'll follow your prompts for the most part, fine, but remain flexible and don't try to railroad them, and allow enough wiggle room if they decide to do something off the wall. If you find them to be very impulsive, tending to do whatever they fancy, then you'll need to improvise a lot.

 

One thing is to think in 'encounters'. For the purpose of comparison, in video games, encounters would be the puzzles you'd have to complete to finish a dungeon, or the objectives your have to complete in a quest, or a room full of enemies to fight past. Some can be considered a short or side quest themselves. Video games often only have one way to complete those objectives, but you aren't restricted; think of multiple ways to finish an encounter, and don't regard failure as 'game over' or 'you're stuck until you complete it', but as a door to different outcomes. Encounters can be a bit longer in scope, and can include a small number of things that need be done, but are all closely linked and take place in a short period of time. For example, Toydarian Grocery Shopping and Taming the Dragon are a little longer than others, and some (like The Dead Road and Corellian Shuffle) can be expanded into longed adventures.

 

Others things, like what tools to bring to a game and what you might leave behind, will probably take you a few sessions to figure out. I don't use my GM screens much, but I don't know what I'd do without the adversary decks. You might be the opposite.

[whafrog 9,990]

It will be part of a long-running campaign. I just want to make sure that the sessions don't run entirely too long or too short, and was wandering what that entails prep wise and encounter wise in your experience.

 

It's highly variable.  Sometimes the players dig into a scenario like bulldogs into a steak, and you only do half of what you planned.  Sometimes, they solve the situation you've presented in half the time you expect, and you need to have the next phase ready.

 

I plan less than I used to.  This won't mean as much if you've never played RPGs before, because there's nothing to compare to, but here's why:

 

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/188406-running-a-freeform-plot/

 

I spend much more time on NPCs and their motivations than I do on the details of how difficult a lock is, or what a hacking attempt will require.  I usually wing the latter depending on how difficult, relative to the player's skill, I want it to be, factoring in how much of a roadblock I want a skill check to be.  I find the NPCs more important to spend time on because, say, if you want the PCs to be able to bribe a guard, then you need a reason that guard only has a Willpower of 1 and no ranks in Discipline...maybe he's just a greedy so-and-so, or maybe he's just fed up with his job, but that kind of thing can add a lot of flavour.  I'd say I spend 3-4 hours map making and image grabbing, and 1-2 hours NPC and session prepping, for a 3 hour session.

 

BTW, the "relative to the player's skill" phrase is important IMHO.  You want the session to be a challenge, but not impossible.  It's very much worth looking at the PC's skill ranks for the challenges you set up, and scale them accordingly.  Taking a cue from the way the dice statistics work, if you want them to generally "succeed with danger" you make the challenge pool 1 die smaller than the PC's pool, which gives you the flexibility to throw in setback and/or flip a destiny point to raise the tension.

 

Also, read this guy, available here:

http://angrydm.com/2013/05/four-things-youve-never-heard-of-that-make-encounters-not-suck/

and here:

http://www.madadventurers.com/category/journals/angry-rants/

 

And listen to these:

http://www.madadventurers.com/category/field-recordings/skill-monkey/

 

Hope that helps

[gentlemanscoundrel 151]

One of my favorite GM tools are these little metal book mark things.  I think I picked a box of 50 of these things up at Staples in another life time, but they are super thin, clip on a page, and have this kind of arrow indicator on the page to help me remember why I put them there.  I also tend to organize them so clips attached to the top of the page point at important tables (like the crit chart, what you can spend advantage/threat on, that sort of thing) and important blocks of text go on the side of the page for mechanics that come up frequently that just haven't stuck in my brain yet for some reason.

 

In my experience building a good session is like cooking.  You want to hit as many taste buds as you can to generate complex but harmonious flavors.  Just like earthy mushrooms, acidic tomatoes, sweet onions, and savory garlic make a great pasta sauce, you want a little intrigue, a little socializing, maybe a mystery, and then some bare knuckle combat.  Mix it up, and be prepared for people to come up with more than one solution to any obstacle placed in front of them.  Another thing to keep in mind, and I wish I could remember who said this is something to the effect of "There are three things you have to ask yourself to tell a great story.  What does this person want, why can't they have it, and why should I care?"  This is where character's motivations really come in handy.  Think of a way to put as many of them together at once as you can.  For example, in my current campaign I am running, I have one player motivated by Justice, one who wants to overthrow the Empire, one who is moved by the Living Force, and a third who wants to help the helpless.  So, I pull this together in a plot that has some mysterious aliens that are gobbling up outer rim colonies and the empire is after them to steal their tech.  Mr. Justice and Ms. Help the Helpless want to defend the colonies and stop the dangerous crossfire, Mr. Living Force is like, "well, clearly I was here the same time it was here so I can put a stop to this and use it as a complex lesson for my padawan," and Mr. Hates the Empire is just glad that soooo many imperials keep showing up so he can ruin their plans, knock over their sand castles, pee in their cheerios, and steal their toys/blow them up because REASONS!

 

Now, with the people I run games for, I am about 30% preparation and 80% improvisation.  Yes, that adds up to 110%, but that accounts for the third of the prep work I do that I have to throw away because someone thermal detonators themselves to stop the inquisitors from escaping or figures out a totally legit way to completely and totally upset my apple cart.  (Rassenfrassen ion cannons and tractor beams)  For the most part, though, I plan two points.  The start, and the end.  Around the start I liberally sprinkle some clues and some well defined NPCs.  Once play begins, everyone and everything begins by reacting to the plot impetus.  Every action then has an equal and opposite reaction.  NPCs have their own plans, the PCs make theirs, sometimes they meet, other times they pass like ships in the night.  Sometimes they collide like trains.  Every hint, every clue will eventually lead them to one inescapable conclusion. Like, my current group just finished what i consider the "second act" of my three act plot for the first campaign, and managed to make a contact for a second campaign after the conclusion of the An'Laraj menace.  Thanks to some work they did in act two, they have managed to put a serious dent in the amount of quality Imperial reinforcements, but all roads lead to act 3, no matter how far afield they went in act one.  

 

Also, I second Whafrog's comments about "relative to the player's skill."  Also, I am a big fan of players doing high risk/reward stuff, so I try and sneak a red die into their difficulty either through ranks of adversary, flipping of destiny, or occasionally "because I said so" because when things are really moving a despair can be as entertaining as triumph and overcoming that kind of adversity can be really rewarding for a group.  A despair on a mechanics roll at the end of our first session actually set up for a beautiful second session, where the engineer didn't notice they were dumping fuel until they were sitting on empty.  Space is a harsh place to be out of gas when the shadow port you were at was just eaten by giant space crabs.

 

One last thing... Check in with your players and get a list of things they think would be cool to do.  If you can, and it's not too outlandish, try and find a way to work with them.  My group's "face" character, trained to be a diplomat to the underworld has aspirations of real diplomatic legitimacy with a side order of wanting to unify his home world.  It played out over a couple of session in act two, but throw in some opportunity for the ninja to be sneaky, the tech to get up close and personal with reverse engineered space crab beam weapons, things like that, and everyone gets a little moment in the sun while one guy has a dream come true, honest to goodness diplomatic authority!  That'll come in handy in the second campaign.

 

Any way, hope you found some of this helpful!

 

Cheers, and happy gaming! 

[Blackbird888 4,106]

A few more thoughts:

 

Check in with your players and get a list of things they think would be cool to do.

Session Zero. BeggingforXP. Google it.

 

A bit on my previous: so as not to waste time writing a bunch of content and then losing it when or if your players go off the rails, make as much as you can adaptable to nearly any situation. You might think of an interesting mystery for your party to discover, and then they just sprint past it without a second thought. Don't be afraid to save that for a different game or a later session. Better to do a little extra work to make it fit in later than to waste all of your previous work.

 

And about despair and challenge die, don't just throw them in there whenever or on a whim. If you add the possibility of a despair, be prepared for the consequences of it showing up. You generally decide when to flip a destiny point and upgrade to a challenge die, or when an adversary will have ranks in the Adversary talent, or when players will need to roll an opposed check, all of which have the chance for despair. I can't think of any talents that players can voluntarily upgrade difficulty off the top of my head, but if there are, then make note if the players buy them and think of some results that would be appropriate if they cropped up. Prepare accordingly.

[Braendig 831]

In brief, consider any interaction with a significant NPC an encounter.  These allow the plot to move forward.  They tend to take anywhere from 5 minutes to a half hour to complete (usually).  The large variability in the time makes planning difficult and depend greatly upon the type of encounter and the group playing.  One important thing is larger groups get through things more slowly than smaller groups.  This is due to more people being involved in the discussions.

 

Assuming a standard, 4 person party, I would recommend, for a 2-3 hour session, 3-4 social encounters where they get briefed on the mission, do some research, and go shopping for anything they don't already have but need for the job.  Follow this with 1-3 combat encounters (these may run long).  After that, have a few social encounters where they wrap up the 'job' for their initial contacts.

 

This is just a standard format and should be able to be modified/expanded upon as you get to learn your group more.  Frequently GMs will get a feel for the direction their players want to go and what areas they want to focus on, but, until you're comfortable tailoring things to your party, try to follow something like this template.

[bradknowles 4,441]

Some good stuff here.

One thing I would point out is that the reason you’re all sitting down to the table is to have fun. You’re involved in cooperative interactive improv storytelling in the Star Wars universe, and so anything you can do to make that more fun for yourself and the other players, well … that’s probably a good idea.

Be open to wacky ideas that the players come up with, and encourage them in this regard. If they roll a Triumph, ask them how they want to use that. Sure, you can come up with some ideas of your own, but those should be theirs to spend. If they roll a Despair and come up with a great idea of what happens, then even though that should be yours to spend, feel free to go with their idea.

If you think it could help your game, you could give out extra XP (or other awards) for players who go above and beyond in terms of providing their own “Captains Log” on a web page or blog somewhere, or providing a lot of background detail for their character. You could give out extra XP (or other awards) for particularly good roleplaying during the game, or for coming up with really good ideas for how to spend Triumph or Despair, even if it was for someone else and not themselves.

Don’t be afraid of PCs rolling failure on the dice. Be prepared for them to succeed when you thought that you gave them impossible odds, and for them to fail when you thought they couldn’t. Some of the best moments I can remember in previous games are when we failed on the thing we tried to do, and then something else happened that turned out to be strange and wonderful.

IMO, the Adversary cards are a great tool to help you with a pool of NPCs, but keep in mind that you can always take a card sitting in front of you and skin it as someone or something else. Having the inspiration is at least half the battle.

Note that Salith has taken the information from all the various FFG books and put together his own deck of cards for every known Adversary, and that is linked in the “Compiled Resources List” thread at <https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/85616-compiled-resources-list/>. So, if the FFG cards are not enough for you, there is a larger pool of cards out there that you can download and print off. They’re not as pretty as the ones that FFG produces, but they are available to you.

In the acting profession, there is a concept called “The Method”. Sure, you’re supposed to learn your lines, but the most important thing is to know the motivation for your character in that scene. If you can internalize that and fully and completely embrace that motivation at that time, then everything you do and say will be consistent with what the writer was trying to express, and it is entirely possible that you may come up with different lines that are actually better than what is written on the page. More importantly, with The Method, you will be able to say volumes with a glance or a hand tremble or some other non-verbal action, and that will help sell the scene better than any words that might come out of your mouth. The key is knowing the motivation of your character in that scene.

You can use this same kind of technique with NPCs, which I think was at least part of the point that whafrog was making above. Knowing their motivations and what they might be doing behind the scenes whether the PCs are there or not, can help you build a more believable and realistic feeling galaxy, without necessarily causing you to have to do a lot more work to get there.

Edited September 18, 2015 by bradknowles

[LugWrench 292]

I would recommend that, for your first session, you concentrate on making the characters...go over the rules, have everyone take a look at the various races and classes, brainstorm ideas...just make it an informal session.  Theres no pressure to have a character made in 5 minutes flat, so why rush and make something that the players may not enjoy?  Also, be ready to deal with characters from different sources.  What if one person wants to play a smuggler, another wants to be a rebel spy, and another wants to be a jedi-in-hiding?

After that, do your homework.  If you are playing a module, read it completely, make sure you understand it before everyone sits down to play it.  Take a look at your players backgrounds (obligations, etc.) and decide how that would get them into the module.

Be ready for your players to go off the rails.  Players have a hilarious tendency to do something you might never have considered.  "You see a park with trees, a small pond, a gazeebo..."  "WE ATTACK THE GAZEEBO!  HUZZAH!!".  One of the best things a GM can learn is how to think on his feet and come up with something after the players go off on a wild tear.

A logbook wouldn't be a bad idea.  A notebook where you can jot down notes for the session...who accomplished what, who pissed off the local magistrate and the like.  It gives you a chance to remind everyone what happened in the previous session ("When we last saw our heroes..."), and gives you ideas for recurring NPC's, or villains.  "Didn't she shoot you, once?"  "Everyone's makin' a fuss...."
After that, its mostly just little details.  Maybe having some dramatic music for those boss fights.  Perhaps everyone bringing a few bucks for the Summon Pizza Ritual (as we called it in the D&D group).
Most importantly, after the third session or so, just ask everyone 'So...what do you think so far?'

[shlominus 170]

don't get overwhelmed. prepare as much as you feel you'll need. every gm has a different take on how much is needed, you need to find your own. focus on what you know and feel comfortable with. gming takes one thing to do well and that's experience. you will make mistakes. doesn't matter, every mistake is a lesson learned and will make you a better gm.

 

if the players do something unexpected (they will!), don't panic. improvisation is a major part of being a gm and you will learn a lot from this.

 

there's a lot going on when planning a session and how long it's probably going to take. little player experience means it will take longer. same for gm experience. will you have more combats or social encounters? detective work? will the characters be suited or interested in those things? if they focus on some of those things, these sections will take longer. if you include travel, how will you handle that? in detail or not? will they get sidetracked? i remember a session where our party thought that a chance encounter was vital to the plot and we wasted 6 hours trying to uncover what the encounter was about. you can't plan for that.

 

remember what i said about not getting overwhelmed in the beginning? i meant stuff like the last paragraph. ignore the last paragraph! these are not issues you should be worrying about now. that's stuff you'll figure out for yourself in time. just go out and have fun.

[SteelEagle 46]

I do apologize for my lack of response. It has been a while, but my free time is very narrowly focused! As I've been designing the sessions I've kept a lot of this advice in mind, and I thank you all for your help.

We've had seven sessions, and it has been an absolute blast for all involved- or at least I think so. If I am wrong, someone is hiding their disappointment exceptionally well. The players are really fleshing out their characters and while they have, of course, smashed around the path, I think I've made where I want them to go interesting enough that I haven't had to really scrap anything I've had planned. When I have had to improvise, I think I've handled it well. My favorite moment was one I wasn't involved in- last session, the players had a near-30 minute In-Character discussion about everything they've learned and came to several important agreements and solutions. I didn't even have to say anything! I was highly encouraged by that.

[whafrog 9,990]

My favorite moment was one I wasn't involved in- last session, the players had a near-30 minute In-Character discussion about everything they've learned and came to several important agreements and solutions. I didn't even have to say anything! I was highly encouraged by that.

 

That is the best sign.  Personally I find it most useful when that happens because it allows me to tailor what's coming up with their ideas in mind.  If their ideas are good then they get injected into the story.  If they don't quite work they can be red-herrings-that-lead-to-something-useful.

[bradknowles 4,441]

One of my favorite GM tools are these little metal book mark things.  I think I picked a box of 50 of these things up at Staples in another life time, but they are super thin, clip on a page, and have this kind of arrow indicator on the page to help me remember why I put them there.  I also tend to organize them so clips attached to the top of the page point at important tables (like the crit chart, what you can spend advantage/threat on, that sort of thing) and important blocks of text go on the side of the page for mechanics that come up frequently that just haven't stuck in my brain yet for some reason.

For that function, I prefer to use colored Post-It Filing Tabs, such as http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/651172/Post-it-Durable-Tabs-2-x/ and http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/424968/Post-it-Durable-Tabs-2-World/.

They’re easy to write on with a Sharpie permanent marker, especially if you use the ultra-fine tip variant. That way you can put a two or three word description on each tab, so that you know exactly what is where in the book. You don’t have to go searching for where Armor is located, because you’ve got a tab for it. You don’t have to go searching for where Force powers are discussed, because you’ve got a tab for it.

I can’t claim that this idea is mine originally. I stole the concept from one of the other players who showed up to the first FFG SWRPG game I was at, but then I never saw him again.

[Colin1012 49]

I do apologize for my lack of response. It has been a while, but my free time is very narrowly focused! As I've been designing the sessions I've kept a lot of this advice in mind, and I thank you all for your help.

We've had seven sessions, and it has been an absolute blast for all involved- or at least I think so. If I am wrong, someone is hiding their disappointment exceptionally well. The players are really fleshing out their characters and while they have, of course, smashed around the path, I think I've made where I want them to go interesting enough that I haven't had to really scrap anything I've had planned. When I have had to improvise, I think I've handled it well. My favorite moment was one I wasn't involved in- last session, the players had a near-30 minute In-Character discussion about everything they've learned and came to several important agreements and solutions. I didn't even have to say anything! I was highly encouraged by that.

 

If everyone is still showing up seven sessions in, I would say you are doing something right.

 

The key to being a good GM/DM/Storyteller/Whatever is to allow your players to have fun. If they took almost half an hour just to step into the roles of their characters and have a conversation that is an excellet sign they are having fun and enjoying those characters. Those are the moments I live for as a GM. I think it all comes down to the fact that after systems are mastered/left behind and campaignes are over we are left with memories of the stories we tell together. I had a player not too long ago start talking about a game I ran years ago (D&D 3.0 was the new system we were just beginning to learn) and about how they loved their character and just generally being nostalgic about that game. I think that showed me how successful that game was it wasn't the amount of prep I put into it, or how well we did with getting the rules down 100%. It was the effort that we as a gamming group put into telling a fun story where the characters were part of a world and had goals and ambitions that sometimes required changing something I had prepared so they could persue the avenues that interested them or fit their characters. So my advice is to listen to those in character conversation with an ear toward what you can take from it to further engage the players.

[derroehre 369]

As it seems you are doing great, congrats on that

 

 

Anyway a few tips I learned the hard way:

 

NEVER expect to know what the PC's will do. If they do something cool or awesome, try to go with it, but only as far as you're comfortable as the GM.

 

If you think about missions or quests or rather encounters, don't always write specific endings and consequences, but think more in "directions".

 

Example:
 

They are trapped by pirates in space. Now they can react:

• agressively: (attack them)
• diplomatic: (offer them something or otherwise come to an agreement with them, possibly friends)
• "cowardly": (abandon freight and run, pay them off)
• Clever/circumventive: (lead them into an asteroid field, trick them when they come aboard, lead them to an imperial outpost)

If you think about those "directions" they can take and possible consequences it is

1. WAAAYYY easier to write because you don't have to script every line of dialogue
2. if the PC's go way out of their way to do something you absolutely prepared nothing for (and they will. they always do at some point.) it becomes muche easier to guide them back to the story