Tips for first-time GM running FFG StarWars?

pjnick, 1 month ago

This is one of my favorite systems and I’ve learned a lot playing it, so I apologize in advance for what will probably be a wall of text. You can TL;DR the bold bits.

Black dice are like salt, sprinkle some on everything - Black dice are a great way to add adversity from the world (poor visibility? suspicious guards? time crunch?) and a good way to use generated threat (distracted, damaged gear). Also, many PC talents allow them to peel black dice off of skills they specialize in - and players really enjoy telling the GM they don’t have to roll the bad dice.

Blue dice are like pepper, add a little to most things - They’re a great way to reward players who have a clever approach, tie in to character backstory (my former-pirate probably knows who to fence stuff to around here), good roleplaying, or good preparation.

Facing a player with something they’re good at is cool, facing a player against something they’re bad at is interesting - You want a healthy mix of both. A gunslinger PC wants to take out hordes of mooks and absolutely should get the chance to let loose now and then. But if the party disguises themselves as maintenance personal as part of a heist, that same low-int gunslinger should be flagged down by one of the staff and asked to fix a broken grav-lift. It puts the PC in a tense situation where they have to think (I can shoot my way out, but that blows our cover. I can try to fix it but raise suspicion if I fail. Can I create a distraction? Can I talk my way out?). Making scenarios like this happen isn’t too hard because…

Splitting the party is a great idea - As others here have said, combat balance is basically non-existent in this game, so a split party isn’t a death sentence in combat (and even losing combat isn’t usually lethal). Also, escaping from combat is much easier in this system than others (Hop on a speeder, hack a door closed, or just use a destiny point and shoot the door controls). Comms exist to keep the party in contact and allow them to coordinate/affect each other. (One character can make a distraction to allow the hacker to slip into a building - the hacker can then help the thief get past security, etc.) A combination of multiple objectives and time-pressure is a great way to get the players to split up. (And the Obligation system is great at creating secondary objectives for this purpose)

There’s plenty of time to get things done in combat - Unlike DND, combat doesn’t put a dead stop to everything else that’s going on. The rules say that one full round of combat in this system is “one to several minutes”. If combat breaks out, party members can still use skills, hack things, get to places, have conversations (probably away from the firefight). Very often in EotE, my players found themselves in a “fighting retreat” after tripping an alarm and needing to finish the objective or escape, it keeps tension up and you can use minion groups as reinforcements for added time pressure.

clay_pidgin, 1 month ago

This is tremendously helpful, thank you. I don’t think I got to see much of the narrative potential in the game I played, but I’d like to think I can do better since I know what I want going into it.

I do recall, when I played, that I didn’t get to use my talents often - partly because I was a navigator and we spent most of our time on planets, and partly because our GM rarely, if ever, added black dice. I’ll be sure to use the black and blue bonus dice more often!

tissek, 1 month ago

Was a while since last but…

• balance is a fickle mistress best ignored. With npc advantages/disadvantages you can easily on the fly adjust pressure.

-when in doubt throw grenades even if the npc is bad at it. Let the grenade destroy environment

• not just invite the players to get involved with resolving adv/disadv, drag them kicking and screaming into it. Including for the npcs
• spend your destiny points. Do it. Do it often
• keep the splat books to a minimum if someone wants to create their own character
• there will be narrative chaos. Don’t fight it, embrace it. Spending destiny points to steer them back on track feels less railroady than just doing it.

clay_pidgin, 1 month ago

This is helpful, thank you very much! I like dragging them into the fun of interpreting the dice in particular.

Tolookah, 1 month ago

Check out the podcast Star wars: redemption, followed by smugglers blues. It’s an entertaining play of ffg’s Star wars. (I’m pretty sure they have a discord and have done some question answering over the Web.)

clay_pidgin, 1 month ago

I enjoyed the Campaign: Star Wars podcast from the One Shot Network. I’ll happily listen to another! It’s hard to compare improv comedians and voice actors to a regular table, though!

Tolookah, 1 month ago

Very true, these guys feel like they tend not to skip rules though. I will note that I don’t know the rules as written, so they might be skipping major parts and I wouldn’t know it.