Every New Beginning Is Some Other Beginnings End(er)

[Ender]

Well. First time running this style of game. I learned a lot, made some mistakes, but overall, thank you all so much for taking your free time, and playing in this little experiment.

My schedule was much more prohibitive than I thought it was going to be, and I know that impacted things, so I appreciate all your patience.

I'm an open book.

[Cal Arcton]

Hey, thanks for running the game! It's great seeing more people GM, and it's doubly cool considering that you're relatively new to the community. Much respect!

I'm gonna go ahead and snag some of the easy questions. The privilege of being first!

Was there anything that surprised you? Especially a positive surprise?

What might you do differently next time around?

Where'd the idea for all of this come from?

[Ender]

Was there anything that surprised you? Especially a positive surprise?

The Nygmus plot. The way I envisioned it, was if anyone explored the Ruins, they'd find the book. The book would start talking as Nygmus began to project himself outwards. Eventually, the person would follow him and release him. That happened as expected. My typical thought process was whoever found it would have the "Oh no, what have I done moment." And turn to try and stop him. The surprise was him ending up as a Sith Mentor. I had to explore teaching the Force from a perspective I normally don't do as I've always done a Jedi Mentor in my table games.

An unexpected surprise was the Cave of the Ashla scene. It flowed naturally, and I really just wrote that as a seat of my pants let's go with the flow type thing. Quinn was great to write that Jedi Trial, essentially, and they got what they were looking for out of it, so it was a fun little moment.

Honestly, my absolute favorite thing, was the diversity of the cast. It was neat seeing how everyone designed their characters, the little background notes. There were a couple characters that I really wanted to latch on to that didn't quite come through, due to life and such. I was surprised no one picked up the Scoundrel or any other spec that dealt with minimizing the economic impacts of the rarity chart, which was something I felt I had advertised early on in the planning process,

I loved how that some groups latched onto the Homestead rules. They were really really neat to see come off the ground, and when push came to shove, gave the game a real NIMBY feel, which isn't something you typically see in Star Wars. I liked that.

What might you do differently next time around?

Not work 50-60 hours a week. In all seriousness, I bit off more than I could chew. There were a lot of ideas I wanted to implement that I kept trimming down and down and down just to have something manageable. The idea of doing the small groups worked, but it also presented it's own set of troubles that I had to find solutions to on the fly. Like I made a rule for myself that in combat, with multiple different groups being represented, I wouldn't spend Destiny Points from one group on another (i.e. if I was attacking Cal, I wouldn't use a Destiny Point from outside of 12 Parsecs on him). It still meant I had a wide variety of options around, but it was a lot of bookkeeping that if I wasn't at 100% due to just getting home from work, or just waking up before work, could get bogged down.

Get more directly involved with each group personally. The original idea was I would just oversee the metaplot and anything Force related, leaning on the AGMs to handle each group individually. But when life happens, as it is likely to do, this fell apart quickly. If I had a back up plan in place instead of flying by the seat of my pants on that one, things might have gone smoother/more things would have come out.

Where'd the idea for all of this come from?

I have a folder on my computer called GM Holocron. It's where I put notes from games, scenarios I've written, NPCs, and other things for plotting campaigns. I've had something like this in there for awhile, just a couple of sentences. It was inspired by watching Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai relatively recently, as well as several Clone Wars episodes (the Onderon arc was an influence, as was the literal Seven Samurai rip off episode where Anakin, Asohka, and Obi Wan work with Bounty Hunters to train a village to fight off the Confederacy).

It was also inspired by some blanks in the story of the Aftermath Trilogy, and a what if question of "What happens to an Admiral who didn't agree to run away with Sloane?"

As for the planet itself, I like Earth-like planets in Star Wars because we don't see them in the movies, they're always Desert-Planet, or Ice-Planet, or Desert-Planet-but-it-really-sucks-here. Having something that was more "Yeah, here's some mountains, snowy tundras, forests, steppes and plains..." just seemed interesting, and creating a resource rich planet deep in the outer rim made sense to me.

[Cefey Raneth]

Thank you for the game, and for GMing, and I hope to see you GMing again in the future.

I can tell you seemed to have bigger plans for this game than what came to be, so it's a shame that real life got in the way and you were forced to cut back on the ideas you had. Maybe next time, have a more focused story overall for the GMs to work with, since you all seemed a bit spread out, especially when RL was kicking the team. It's nice to have lots of stuff, but as you said, it became "bit over more than you could chew".

Looking forward to next time when that will be!

[Kai Wryssald]

Thanks for the game Ender!

[Jelna Vawn]

I would like to state first the positive: I finished this game because I thought it was worthwhile to. When I think a game is utter crap, I drop it without a second thought. Thank you for your efforts, cause I know you put a lot of work into the game. So while I will be proceeding with criticism, I would like to reiterate that this does not mean that the game was bad. On the other hand, I see definite room for improvement and would be admittedly hesitant to participate in a sequel if these concerns were not addressed. I wouldn't mention them, though, if I did not think that they could be.

These are not in any particular order like importance or so on. They are just in the order they came in. It is also not all encompassing, as some might be more suitable in private and I might have forgotten some matters. Finally, this is not feedback just for you (Ender) but rather than entire GM team.

Reward Disparity
From what I saw, certain players were showered with rewards while others received very little for their efforts. Maybe I am placing too much weight on lightsaber crystals due to their listed price but those seemed so easy to get. In the meantime, trying to keep the planet from collapsing seemed very unfulfilling from a monetary point of view. Sure, we have the plot reward of fixing things, but everyone gets that award. Only some get the sabers. I also perceived some unbalance in credit rewards.

Lack of Events
I had a hard time being excited for a new day when it was either no events going on or nothing I felt like getting involved in. I think the combat and other branching events were done well enough but the game really would have benefited from more simple dice rolling. While not particularly complex, this often gives us something to do and there is, admittedly, some excitement in seeing if you did the best at something silly like training a dog to do tricks or if your poetry was the best.

Too much "Rule of Cool"
I put "Rule of Cool" in quotes because I saw it used in defense a few times and I found many of the defended actions to be quite the opposite. My point is, I think there were times when things were seen as exciting to run but honestly just caused more hassle than was worth dealing with. Sometimes these instances can just make the player characters feel incompetent and that is never the goal of these games. In any of them, they are the protagonists, and some leeway can be given in challenge if it will keep people happy.

Rushed Plot
I think the Imperial invasion happened way too quickly. There was not a lot of windup and it felt too forced; despite all our efforts, everything kind of just happened. But moreover, they landed, got shot up a bit, and then suddenly there was an uprising and the Imperials fell apart. Now, what I think would have worked better would be if the game was split into two. You could have Noventa have other problems and then the climax could be the Imperial occupation. Then, the sequel could be all about opposing the new regime. There could be events about gaining supplies, rallying the populace, and so on.

Difficulty Too High
I feel like a lot of rolls were made from the assumption that a specialist should have a hard time completing it. The problem with this is that not everyone is going to be specializing in it. And after that, the specialist is the only one who has a reasonable chance of succeeding. If they fail, then nobody else can shore it up. Basically, I think the difficulties were set a bit high for the XP range, which calls back to the incompetency issue. There's also my opinion that, in some instances, these didn't really make sense to be so hard. Like it felt like the only reason the tests were difficult was because of meta reasons instead of established plot points.

But again, thank you for the hard work you put into the game. It must have been difficult with such a tight schedule.

[Ender]

I would like to state first the positive: I finished this game because I thought it was worthwhile to. When I think a game is utter crap, I drop it without a second thought. Thank you for your efforts, cause I know you put a lot of work into the game. So while I will be proceeding with criticism, I would like to reiterate that this does not mean that the game was bad. On the other hand, I see definite room for improvement and would be admittedly hesitant to participate in a sequel if these concerns were not addressed. I wouldn't mention them, though, if I did not think that they could be.

Thank you, for finding the game worthwhile! I appreciate hearing that, and I am glad you are approaching the table with critiques. I'm always looking to improve, because the goal for everyone is to have fun.

Reward Disparity
From what I saw, certain players were showered with rewards while others received very little for their efforts. Maybe I am placing too much weight on lightsaber crystals due to their listed price but those seemed so easy to get. In the meantime, trying to keep the planet from collapsing seemed very unfulfilling from a monetary point of view. Sure, we have the plot reward of fixing things, but everyone gets that award. Only some get the sabers. I also perceived some unbalance in credit rewards.

I come from a long line of games where rewards were unbalanced, and that's the style of game I like. I do get, and appreciate, why it would be frustrating, but things like crystals, I absolutely ignore the book price. You can't just go to Toshi Station and pick up a kyber crystal. I saw Quinn as someone who wanted that as a goal, from character submission on and she interacting with a situation where I could provide that. Maybe it comes from my mentality as a player, where I tend to focus more on what I can do without equipment, because equipment can be damaged/lost/rendered inaccessible.

Lack of Events
I had a hard time being excited for a new day when it was either no events going on or nothing I felt like getting involved in. I think the combat and other branching events were done well enough but the game really would have benefited from more simple dice rolling. While not particularly complex, this often gives us something to do and there is, admittedly, some excitement in seeing if you did the best at something silly like training a dog to do tricks or if your poetry was the best.

I wanted to do something different. There were things that could be done that I specifically didn't want to prompt any one on (primary example being poking around the Ancient Ruins.) I can see where many would enjoy that style, but that's something that I never... I dunno, for lack of a better term, jived with. Star Wars never seemed to me about showing up, rolling dice, and accruing points. Having been on the frustrating end where you absolutely fail at the thing you're supposed to be good at/show off on, it just was a turn off. I could have been more upfront about my intentions, but I felt that would detract from what I was trying to do, which was organic exploration of a setting. It was totally possible to play the game, and never detail with the Empire plot, and then, all you know is all of a sudden, the remnant is in power.

The game was in a sense of a way, experimental, more run how a table game is run, because that's what I enjoy doing, and wanted to see if it could work in this format. There were parts that did, and parts that didn't.

Too much "Rule of Cool"
I put "Rule of Cool" in quotes because I saw it used in defense a few times and I found many of the defended actions to be quite the opposite. My point is, I think there were times when things were seen as exciting to run but honestly just caused more hassle than was worth dealing with. Sometimes these instances can just make the player characters feel incompetent and that is never the goal of these games. In any of them, they are the protagonists, and some leeway can be given in challenge if it will keep people happy.

I'll be honest, I don't know the things you are referencing where that was used as a defense, scanning Discord, the only thing I could see where it was used was in support of what players wanted to do. If there was a misinterpretation and representation of that, that is entirely possible, but I never wanted the players to feel incompetent.

Rushed Plot
I think the Imperial invasion happened way too quickly. There was not a lot of windup and it felt too forced; despite all our efforts, everything kind of just happened. But moreover, they landed, got shot up a bit, and then suddenly there was an uprising and the Imperials fell apart. Now, what I think would have worked better would be if the game was split into two. You could have Noventa have other problems and then the climax could be the Imperial occupation. Then, the sequel could be all about opposing the new regime. There could be events about gaining supplies, rallying the populace, and so on.

I wanted to keep the game as one because I didn't want to keep people hanging on for a year or two waiting to deal with the occupation, especially after we just got done, as a community, playing an occupation game. It wasn't what I wanted the focus of the game to be on. People jumped on board with looking at the situation, and saying "NIMBY."

I scripted the Admiral and her "fleet" to be in desperation. They didn't have supplies, they didn't have the resources to actually hold onto any territory. The little snippets of fiction in the OOC forums were supposed to highlight that. The Gladiator didn't have power to operate lights on all floors, they didn't have a garrison. The biggest ground threat they had were two All-Terrain Defense Pods, which really aren't all that good at doing anything other than standing in front of buildings and looking menacing. They're the ED-209s of the Imperial Military Machine.

The populace was supposed to be already tired from two wars where people came in and told them what to do, as presented in the planetary write up. I liked the idea of a story where people were already tired of dealing with someone coming in and telling them what to do, and just going "nah".

Difficulty Too High
I feel like a lot of rolls were made from the assumption that a specialist should have a hard time completing it. The problem with this is that not everyone is going to be specializing in it. And after that, the specialist is the only one who has a reasonable chance of succeeding. If they fail, then nobody else can shore it up. Basically, I think the difficulties were set a bit high for the XP range, which calls back to the incompetency issue. There's also my opinion that, in some instances, these didn't really make sense to be so hard. Like it felt like the only reason the tests were difficult was because of meta reasons instead of established plot points.

I disagree, while I respect your opinion and thought process. I've always views FFG Star Wars as a game for specialists. If you generalize, you will not get far. I've always played in groups where each member specialized, and would have one, maybe two secondary things they were good at to shore up. I've always found myself yearning for higher difficulties, seeing what I can do, and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. I have just as much fun at the table seeing myself come up with a bunch of threat and despair as I do succeeding, because it creates a new opportunity and challenge to deal with. And so, I designed my encounters based off of how I would see them approached at a table, and counted on specialists. The game isn't XP efficient enough to be able to shore up on all things.

I never applied Adversary to things that weren't directly combat related. Social interactions were based off of the NPCs relevant stat. The only 5s I gave within the game were to Nygmus and 13th Sister, and that was due to building them with the Inquisitor rules as presented in FnD CRB. 5, 4, 3, 3, 3, 2. The typically had one or two abilities (13th Sister only had Improved Parry and regular Reflect. Nygmus only had Improved Parry and Terrify), and then a small suite of Force Powers (13th Sister had Enhance only on Coordination, and then Force Leap down the right hand side, and move basic power. Nygmus had Conjuration Mastery, Enhance Force Leap as an action, and Unleash as presented in FnD Core). The non-Force Sensitive NPCs, if I gave them stats, were cribbed straight from NPCs in the books. Verlasso was Thrawn stats, with some slight tweaks (Her Presence was higher, her intelligence lower). The Death Troopers were straight up, with the exception of giving them the Troop Command that the Sergeants have.

I don't enjoy social skills not coming up to a roll, nor do I enjoy them being used as "we'll roleplay this out and get them to agree." At the end of the day, it has to have mechanical weight. Social skills have social defenses.

65 xp is essentially three sessions into a table campaign. At that point, Hard is the new Average. When things got really tough, we were at 85 xp. I judged my difficulties off of how FFG presents their modules in such a manner, and felt they were in line with presenting a difficult challenge, but not being insurmountable. Sometimes, the dice don't come up, and that's a thing. Sometimes, you get a lucky crit that renders the main threat of an NPC completely inert, and triggers their flight programming (Nygmus was essentially Cobra Commander. All talk, but once he's in a corner, he bails).

But again, thank you for the hard work you put into the game. It must have been difficult with such a tight schedule.

Thank you again for playing, Neko. I appreciate you doing so. If you find that you don't feel it's a game you don't want to come back to, all the respect and best wishes in the world, I wouldn't want you to not have fun. If you decide you want to play in a sequel, I would welcome you to come in and play! Thank you again for laying out your concerns, and I hope that my answers at least put an insight into my thought process on running Star Wars.

[Jelna Vawn]

I'll have to give your responses more of a read. Still, I really do appreciate the answers and the effort you put into them. I'll respond to the two that I have answers formulated for:

Reward Disparity
From what I saw, certain players were showered with rewards while others received very little for their efforts. Maybe I am placing too much weight on lightsaber crystals due to their listed price but those seemed so easy to get. In the meantime, trying to keep the planet from collapsing seemed very unfulfilling from a monetary point of view. Sure, we have the plot reward of fixing things, but everyone gets that award. Only some get the sabers. I also perceived some unbalance in credit rewards.

I come from a long line of games where rewards were unbalanced, and that's the style of game I like. I do get, and appreciate, why it would be frustrating, but things like crystals, I absolutely ignore the book price. You can't just go to Toshi Station and pick up a kyber crystal. I saw Quinn as someone who wanted that as a goal, from character submission on and she interacting with a situation where I could provide that. Maybe it comes from my mentality as a player, where I tend to focus more on what I can do without equipment, because equipment can be damaged/lost/rendered inaccessible.

I am making the assumption that the long line of games that you're mentioning are mainly in small group sessions rather than PbP. If I'm wrong, then I'm sorry for misjudging! But if I am correct, my belief is that PbP players should all receive relatively equal rewards. That's why Session XP is given out on a flat rate rather than participation in certain things. Now, I will also admit that I could have been more proactive with what I wanted. In that case, I didn't want to impose my desires on the GM team because I already know that there's only so much time. It is my belief that others felt the same. I guess my followup question would be if you would be willing to offer more open threads rather than simply exploring locations.

Lack of Events
I had a hard time being excited for a new day when it was either no events going on or nothing I felt like getting involved in. I think the combat and other branching events were done well enough but the game really would have benefited from more simple dice rolling. While not particularly complex, this often gives us something to do and there is, admittedly, some excitement in seeing if you did the best at something silly like training a dog to do tricks or if your poetry was the best.

I wanted to do something different. There were things that could be done that I specifically didn't want to prompt any one on (primary example being poking around the Ancient Ruins.) I can see where many would enjoy that style, but that's something that I never... I dunno, for lack of a better term, jived with. Star Wars never seemed to me about showing up, rolling dice, and accruing points. Having been on the frustrating end where you absolutely fail at the thing you're supposed to be good at/show off on, it just was a turn off. I could have been more upfront about my intentions, but I felt that would detract from what I was trying to do, which was organic exploration of a setting. It was totally possible to play the game, and never detail with the Empire plot, and then, all you know is all of a sudden, the remnant is in power.

The game was in a sense of a way, experimental, more run how a table game is run, because that's what I enjoy doing, and wanted to see if it could work in this format. There were parts that did, and parts that didn't.

PbP kind of lends itself to those sorts of events at times. With people all around the globe, it can sometimes be the main way people can interact with the game. Otherwise, there can be a ton of hangups where there's only one response back and forth between the GM and player or heavy ghosting needs to be involved. In addition, I would say that live events also have the same "show up and absolutely fail" problem. In fact, that's just dice in general, but we use them anyways! All in all, my question is: would you be willing to add less consequential events of that "show up and roll" style? I think they also add a lot of just plain fun and give different people more reason to interact. The prime example I can think of is that Dapper Dog's cosplay wasn't serious at all but it gave people fun threads to mess with.

[Tewzada Star'Ti]

Didja have any goals in mind for Tew or the company that never came around? Something from her past? Obligations? A scene?