A Rookie GM's First Outing!

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Hello! In my group, we have a rotating schedule of games, run by the differing players. We are currently playing a Vampire: The Requiem game, coming off the tails of a Palladium Fantasy game, which was in turn preceded by a Hunter: The Vigil and Pathfinder game (which I must admit is the primary system I work in).

When my proposed PF campaign, set in a homebrew setting, was shot down by the group, they suggested I run something in a world we are all familiar with, naming Star Wars as an example. I ran with that, and one of the older players (even among the group, more than twice my age easily) promised to bring me his 1E D6 books. He forgot, and I went and started downloading the PDFs to my tablet. I practically have an entire library in there now. I have decided to run 2E R&E, because converting things to 2E is easier than converting back. This is what brought me here; one of my most used resources are the Rancor Pit conversion books; wouldn't have even discovered some of the elements I plan to use if not for some of them. I have to thank everybody that worked on them.


Now, let's get on to the game. To be more specific, my campaign. I plan to set it before A New Hope, at least one year beforehand. My rules for character creation are, roughly, thus:

1) I have final say as GM. Other than that, you are free to create your own template, with input from me for recommendations and limitations (gear-wise, mostly) Running your character past me is the first and final step, for I am a fickle, yet easily entertained god. (Running gag in the group, GM=god)
2) Must be inclined to dislike the Empire, if not exactly want to join the Rebellion.
3) No lightsabers, and no trained force users. Non-trained force users, the 'unnatural luck' variety, are allowed, though none of the players has taken that up. (At least for starting characters. We'll see as the game develops how that rule changes.)
4) Each character must have planned a backstory and some sort of arc. Enough to give me something to work with, to incorporate into the game. (Players as a whole have not been informed of this, but the game is at least a month off, and that's assuming the worst in the Vampire game)


So, I have 6 players, who I will roughly sum up here:

The Veteran: Both an actual veteran of armed forces, and of RPGs. Has a sadistic streak, but is a great gamer, with a creative and quick mind. Claims to have an endless well of character concepts, which I believe, given his past PCs of: quickling speed metal bard (PF), troll assassin cholo (PalFan), and a mind mage mastermind (same game, inflicted a legendary tale of dickery when he implanted false memories into another PC and had the player convinced for a month that he had wrongly tried to remove a curse). Is the player that introduced me to D6 Star Wars, and the only guy at the table who has experience with the system. However, his knowledge of the SW universe is a little... outdated, at least compared to my reference point. His planned character is what I describe as a 'Jawa Outlaw Tech', named Pazuzu (of PazuzuTech). His goal is to design tech that is top-of-the-line that everybody wants: lines of all kinds of blasters, ship engines, you name it. Also to strap ship engines to a sandcrawler and use that as his base of operations. I am okay with this, and have been trying to point him in the direction of the Alliance ("Well, as a player, you know who wins the war!"), though ultimately, he plays for fun, with a nasty sense of humor, dragging everyone else along for the ride.

The Host: Another veteran of RPGs, we play at his house, and it's a very nice house indeed. He's a great host as well, with a dedicated gaming room, a good sense of humor, and an infectious way of convincing people he's right. Gaming-wise, he has a very open mind, and is fun to play with. From the campaign proposal several months ago, he wanted to play a bounty hunter. Bored with the stereotypical mandalorian, he first decided to go with a Miralukan. However, he decided to go for something less mechanically iffy, and was leaning towards a Trandoshan. After accidentally showing him Sri-Ruuk, though, I have been edging him more and more to pattern his character after the Trandoshan Mercenaries in SW: Republic Commando, one of my favorite SW games. Also to be part of a Hunter Guild, since it would allow me to have a little more control over the character's goals in exchange for free stuff. Initially suggested playing in a two-ship group, which I rather like.

The Smart Guy: This player is one of the smartest men at the table, currently in law school. Not, however, a rules lawyer, but very good at it if he needs to (which I found out when I tried it). He normally plays characters that are more in the background, and is good at it, and even seems to enjoy it, as long as he has some way to get involved. Wants to play an Astromech Droid, despite my caution. The Veteran wants his jawa to pimp out the droid, something the Smart Guy is somewhat apprehensive about. I was, too, but then I remembered an old LEGO creation that gave an R2 minifigure an comparatively huge, armored, humanoid body, something I have yet to tell either of them. I'm thinking of it as a plug'n'play combat body.

The Tough Guy: This player is closer to my own age than the other three, but is still experienced. He likes to play characters that play to their particular strength, such as absorbing damage in combat or being a stealthy infiltrator. While he initially was intrigued by playing a Human Replica Droid, he decided against it by virtue of being a bit complicated (not arguing with that... is there a concert list somewhere of droid immunities?), he now wants to play a bounty hunter with the Host's character as his partner. They are interested in playing twin trandos, but I am trying to diversify them with 'loud' and 'subtly' characters.

The New Guy: Having only played two sessions with this player, I don't really know him all that well. Relatively young among the group, but older than a third of us, he seems to be open to suggestion, but likes playing up a particular concept. I suggested playing a smuggler-type, something he took to with enthusiasm. I'm guessing he wanted to play a 'space babe' type of character, since his first question was trying to remember the name of the a Twi'Leks. After informing him that Twi'Lek racial stats SUCK, I pointed him at the similar Togruta, which he seems to like. In fact, I think they might be a bit overpowered with 13 racial dice, so I might nerf it a little bit to bring his character down to the level as everyone else. Other than that, the Tramp Freighter model of starting ships, except with a Ghtroc freighter, seems to appeal to him, and I have plans for his benefactor.

The Storyteller: This player is my best friend among the group. We often swap ideas outside of the group, and we think much alike, though I believe I tend to think about execution more and he tends to think about the end result. His character is almost fully realized, and I REALLY like it, especially with what I can do with him. He wants to play an Ex-Republic Veteran named Augustus Church, a non-clone who fought in the GAR during the Clone Wars as an infantry squad leader, also specialized in demolitions. He didn't like the way the New Order was turning out, so he 'disappeared' from the army and retired, marrying a similarly thinking medic in his squad, a Twi'Lek named Am'arie, with whom he had a child, a half-Twi'lek named Madlyn. Several years before the game starts, Church came back from a trip to find his house destroyed, with the burned corpses of his wife and daughter inside. The points the player wants this character to experience are as follows: retrieving his army papers from freaking Korriban, and storming an Imperial strong point in a jury-rigged 'iron man mark 1' suit (of the unidirectional bulletproof style) with a giant weapon which incorporates a flame projector. Other goals the player has are to: steal an Imperial ship by sheer ability of Con (I am allowing him to take Con: Corellian Fire Drill), get a sticky grenade launcher (Pazuzu I am sure can oblige), and starting out with a named grenade launcher (which I can oblige). I have let on that I have plans for his character, and oh are they fun. I will go into them later.

I have several adventures planned, but not much of an overarching plot, besides from Church's plot. My outline for adventures goes roughly as follows:

Encounters on Ord Mantell!
The group starts off separated, all chased by pirates for different reasons. Realize they have to work together to all escape, begin traveling together. This is the introductory adventure, which I will elaborate on later. The group is still working for themselves at this point.

A Cargo Full of Mysteries!
Arriving on Correlia, they are approached by two passengers, a young mousy guy and a large, muscular women, wanting passage to Alderaan, then to an unknown location, without Imperial entanglements. The cargo is just them, a droid, and some engine components. It becomes clear that the man is an engineering savant from Incom defecting to the Alliance with the designs (and prototype) for the X-Wings engines, and the woman is an Alliance agent assigned to protect him. They are confronted by Imperials, pirates, gangs, and bounty hunters, including one I want to make into a recurring character (a Chistori named Vanndred). This would mark the beginning of the characters working for the Alliance, at least indirectly.

From this point, I have vague plans. A few pure published modules (Tatooine Manhunt and Mission to Lianna look pretty cool). In addition, I have this:

The Graven Planet
The group is sent to investigate the disappearance of a team of Rebel Specforce pathfinders on a planet known as Graven. The planet holds ruins of a society of at least industrial level, but all the intelligent life forms live in ramshackle camps that are constantly lit. It quickly becomes apparent that they fear the night for a reason...

Then, there is a series of missions that take place under a special NPC I have planned, whose name is undetermined at this time. He is the wealthy owner of a successful family-owned asteroid mining and processing business in a sector, and several subsidiaries, including a droid design firm. While he is eccentric, his closest employees being either droids, Zeltrons, or overlooked experts, while he himself is withdrawn and calculating, he has an eye for talent, and hires the group (who are encouraged by the Alliance, as they would like his backing) to do be on call for him.

The twist is, that this man is a former Jedi. He left the Jedi Order after an accident that left several scars on his face (which he has refused to get removed) shook his faith in his ability to be a Jedi. He was, however, an expert duelist (he learned dueling form from Dooku, and has a curved lightsaber handle as such), though lacking in other practices of the Force (I was delighted to find out the Failed Jedi template is fit, with no Alter attribute). His records were destroyed during Operation Knightfall by the Jedi, so he has survived all these years with cunning and bribes as he builds up a private droid army to protect himself and his employees. I have several plans for his missions, one being the contact of a species that has developed primitive independent space travel, which is run using Force-users as astrogation computers, with their own small empire, another mission dealing with an ancient droid that the former jedi is basing his design off of, that dates back thousands of years, yet is incredibly advanced.

I will post more details, particularly regarding Church's arc, and more detailed write-ups I have for the individual elements, later. Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas I should hear?

[garhkal]

On the one who wants the combat R2 unit, remember that even being a PC his droid will still be limited in capacity for combat skills and ability to injure sentients due to the droid programming.
As for body mods, let him know you are willing to work with him on those, but they have to be acquired/done in game.

For the one (tough guy) who want's to go with a 2nd bounty hunter, hows about say having him look up Wiphids.

As for the Jawa super-tech, remember making new gear up will be a product of his ability to Engineer stuff (A) skill, so unless he has a 4-5d in the base skill (4d armor, 5d most the other weapon based ones or droid ones) he will need to find someone with those skills, since he ain't starting with them.
You may also want to limit what (A) skills he COULD start with as a product of his backround. In addition if/when he gets his skills up there, he is going to be come a target for all those corps out there looking to 'head hunt' his talent.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I think the player is well aware of what Pazuzu needs to engineer stuff, and I'm not going to let him take any engineering skills at the start, but I am well expecting at least one 8D skill, most likely Starship Repair. As for the LPP of the astro droid, I have no doubt than even though he is probably not going to have any dice in droid programming, both players will find a way. I was thinking the skillware for combat would be loaded into the big body, and the droid gains it by jacking into it.

[Raven Redstar]

There are different schools of thought as far as (A) skills go here. With Engineering skills, it's not unheard of for a character to start a game with an Engineering skill, just keep in mind that there are normally a few things that will limit an engineer from overpowering your campaign, the main 2 are: Time & Money.

Feel free to encourage your player to continue to come up with ideas, and write them down as projects that his engineer is working on. Maybe you send them on a side mission to acquire a rare part or material needed to further one of his projects. You may find you get all kinds of fun sidetracks that happen due to the designing of new tech.

Another thing to keep in mind is that (A) Engineering skills are rolled by themselves when used to actually design or fabricate something new for the first time. I think it is an aspect of skill use that some people forget about at times. They only stack with the prerequisite skills when used to fix things. So if your guy starts the game with (A) Starship Engineering of say 2D, and has space transports repair of 8D, he rolls 10D to repair the ship, but only 2D if he tries to design a new ultra fast hyperdrive to go in the ship.

I'm glad you're making the switch into D6, I think you'll find it can be very liberating to use as a GM in your campaign. I'll quote the best piece of advice I've seen in the 2nd Edition R&E rulebook:

"Never Let the Rules Get in the Way of a Good Story.
You only have to use the rules you want to use. Ignore the
ones that slow things down. Instead, let the characters and
the action move the game along."

There's a lot of great advice on that page, but this stands out best for people coming from other rules heavy systems like D20 and WoD.

Anyway, welcome to the community! I look forward to reading about the shenanigans of Pazuzu and his astromech sidekick.
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RR
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[Ninjaxenomorph]

I think I should go into my plans for Church now. His player has given me a LOT of leeway here, as long as I make an interesting story, which I more than plan to.

Augustus Church served in an as-of-yet unnamed non-clone military unit during the Clone Wars. It was made up of several different species, but mostly humans. The only member the player has fleshed out has been his wife, while I have created another based on an older SW character I have, Raltz Nightwing, though I plan to make his family's death seem like a coverup for a conspiracy to kill his former squadmates. Raltz Nightwing, when the New Order was instituted, a huge supporter. He had the honor of being the first non-clone Stormtrooper, and his DNA was used as a donor. Fast forward about a decade and a half. Still serving, but aging, Nightwing loses his legs to a Rebel bomb. He chooses to, instead of retiring, be fitted with prosthetics and be inducted into a secret program. This program actually turns him into a Phase Zero Darktrooper. I plan to have him be a recurring villain for Church, going from a misguided friend (supports the New Order fervently, a pro-human bigot, etc) to a feared enemy. I also plan to make custom statistics for 'better' stormtroopers, when they should be feared, not cannon fodder.

On to the meat of my plans. Church comes back from a trip to find his family home nearly destroyed, and finds the charred corpses of his family, Owen- and Beru-style. They are framed as rebel insurgents, and the incident is swept under the rug, politically. After some diving, finds out a Star Destroyer is recorded leaving the system (very little other Imperial presence) shortly after his family's deaths, so he enacts a one-man crusade to kill the Imperials who killed his family. The introductory adventure on Ord Mantell begins with him having retrieved the memory core of that Star Destroyer after it was scuttled there.

Here is what the player doesn't know (or at least I have not told him everything): his daughter, Madlyn Church, the half-twi'lek, was not killed. She is force-sensitive, and was replaced with a body double from some other hapless twi'lek they kidnapped. The other Star Destroyer is completely unrelated to the actual forces that kidnapped her, an Imperial Inquisitor with his own private Star Destroyer. He undertakes the lengthy process of breaking her and corrupting her to the Dark Side, something which proves to be quite difficult.

Eventually, at the climax of Church's plot, he finds out where she is being kept, a high-security secret facility. He is going to receive little support for his assault. Beyond this I have lots of ideas, but nothing solid. He might receive help from Vanndred, whom he would have helped rescue his people from an Imperial Extermination ship, he might be assisted by the former Jedi, using his private army of droids to assault the facility. I am not sure of this, and I may have it so that the facility is assaulted and the Inquisitor is not found. However, when Madlyn is found, she is extremely withdrawn and doesn't speak; in fact, when she sees her father (preferably captured and thrown into a force cage) she lets loose a Force Scream, killing almost everybody in the room, and enters Force Hibernation. She is rescued at this point.

The players will not be able to bring her out, so they will likely head to the only force-user they know that doesn't want them dead: the Jedi who owns the mining company. They go to him for help, and he says he will try to bring her out of the coma state. However, they were followed by the Inquisitor, who will start a full-on attack on the asteroid mining base and droid manufacturing facilities. Eventually, he makes his way personally to the group with Madlyn and the Jedi, flanked by his team of elite Inquisitorial Darktroopers (along with Nightwing as well). It is here that he engages the Jedi in a duel, where the Jedi is eventually outmatched. Heavily wounded, with the Inquisitor taunting the heroes, the Jedi drops his lightsaber. Madlyn, by this point, is waking up, and immediately takes up his lightsaber and begins fighting off the Inquisitor, with almost instinctive combat reflexes. It is at this point that Church is, as I plan to put it, 'demoted from revenge-fueled soldier to a dad needing to keep Madlyn from accruing Dark Side Points'. While I make it sound much worse than it is, after that I need to play it by ear. Madlyn, shell-shocked from her years-long torture at the hands of dark-siders, is withdrawn and emotionally blunt, which might lead her to being taken with Church in their adventures. I might have her get over this quickly, though, so I can have fun playing her as a whiny teenage girl ("Dad, I do not want to get on that ship! It smells like Jawa! It took weeks to get the smell out of my clothes last time!"). On the other hand, if the players don't like having her with them, it is fairly easy to sideline Madlyn, as I can have her simply go to train under the Jedi, as he could teach her about the Jedi, and she could teach him the skills she learned while being molded to the Dark Side by the Inquisitor.

[DougRed4]

Your plans sound awesome, Ninjaxenomorph! Lots of fun things, and fairly epic in scope, too! I'm very impressed with the thought you've put into storarcs for the various characters, as well as a longer story for all.

I've made a Chistori, too; in my game he's the bodyguard of the big bad, Inquisitorius (and Dark Jedi) Jerec. Our game is pretty close to yours time-wise, too (we started 2 BBY and are just about to 1 BBY). If you get the time, you should check my campaign thread. Very soon I'm going to be using some spec force stormtroopers, too (whereas most to date have been of the cannon fodder variety).

Thanks for sharing your info with us. It sounds like you've got a fun and experienced group of players, and that's really the most important thing to insure fun gaming!
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[shootingwomprats]

I would point out to you about the Jawa species that the Technical Aptitude is only for repair-oriented skills and would not include designing things.

Technical Aptitude: At the time of character creation only, Jawa characters receive 2D for every 1D they place in repair-orientated Technical skills.

As an aside note, here are some custom modifications I have made for Jawa's in my universe, feel free to use it, part of it or none of it.

Special Abilities:
Jawa Engineering: Jawas are masters at making junk work, even if only for a little while. When making a non-standard repair (jury rigging) the Jawa gets a +1D modifier (repair skills only). These repairs can be made without the proper materials or tools but are unreliable. When the equipment is used and the Wild Die comes up a one, it breaks down immediately (the GM can assess an immediate Complication).

Story Factors:
Varmints: Jawas are cowards and scavengers. They also have a body odor most species and some creatures find unpleasant.
_________________
Don Diestler
Host, Shooting Womp Rats
The D6 Podcast
http://d6holocron.com/shootingwomprats
@swd6podcast, Twitter

[Ninjaxenomorph]

However, you need a minimum of 5D in a repair skill before you can upgrade to the engineering skill. I'm guessing his basic Technical skill is going to be 4D, with something incredibly useful like Space Transports Repair being 8D with the bonus, something useful, but not immediately game-breaking. Hell, at that point its probably cheaper to get Engineering to enhance the skill.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Oh, and I have been considering the jawa smell. The player knows it, too: he wants to make the entire jawa ship smells like him. And if the new Environmental Purifiers have to be shut off to power the upgraded engines, well...

I figured I'd start doing writeups of the individual adventures I have planned. This one is going to be the introductory adventure, which brings the party together.

Encounters on Ord Mantell!

The game begins, for everyone involved,in the outskirts of an outlaw spacer town on the junk yard side of Ord Mantell called New Haven. The planet has recently been overrun with pirates, using the junkyard to steal salvage and build uglies. For some reason or another, everyone is on the run from the pirates, and are heading back to a spacer cantina, the New Haven Classica.

The players start, in usual Star Wars fashion, in separate groups. Using the PC estimates I have now, I have divided them up thus:

Team Smuggler (Togruta smuggler+jawa)- Were hired by their fixer to exchange a small case full of glowing stuff (think Pulp Fiction) for a cargobay full of reclaimed rare starship parts. The pirates ambushed this deal, the other side of the deal has disappeared, and pirates are after them.

Team Hunter (Bounty hunter pair+ astromech)- Team Hunter has captured their latest quarry, Percy Blemk. Son of Tacival Blemk, admiral of the pirate fleet. Understandably, they are chased by much more pirates than the rest; the going is likely to be a moving firefight rather than a desperate chase like the other groups, since they are taking both an unwilling prisoner and an astromech.

Church (by himself)- Church, following a lead given to him by a former squadmate, has been led to the scuttled wreck of the Star Destroyer Procession, and has salvaged the onboard computer's memory core, hoping to get a list of personnel aboard. The ship is on record of leaving the system shortly after his family was killed, and its the latest in a series of unpromising leads. Unfortunately, the pirates were in the process of salvaging the Star Destroyer, so he is pursued for stealing it.

All the groups eventually converge on a street leading to the Classica, and after the party has had a brief moment to interact (hopefully not shooting each other), the pirates converge, and a fight ensues. When the fight is over, the PCs will hopefully just go into the cantina, as its a sort of 'safe haven', and more pirates are on the way (walking into the cantina, everyone in the bar pulls blasters out, so the pirates leave for now).

Hopefully at this point Church will have the other characters look at his recovered memory core, as it was damaged by the hasty escape: an Easy Computer Repair roll will fix it, and a Moderate Computer Programming roll will retrieve the information and have it available for backup, including the information Church wants. In addition, a moderate Communications roll will also reveal that the core contains remnants of an Imperial code that can be used to make a 1-time only distress transponder. After having a quick chat, introducing their characters, etc, a news signal starts flooding the airwaves. The public holonet projector, and the astromech droid, start projecting a signal.

Tacival Blemk comes on, and proclaims that the two trandoshans (or whatever the bounty hunters end up being) have bounties on their heads, in addition to smaller ones for the rest of the party. Also, free port from the pirates will be given to anybody who brings them in. Some of the spacers in the cantina start eying them up, and if the players don't leave soon, I'll have a short firefight break out with some of the more stupid spacers in the cantina.

As they are leaving, the smuggler is contacted by the person behind the other half of the deal, saying that the cargo bay is ready to be loaded. When the party makes it to the spaceport, they find the smuggler's contacts loading the parts onto a ship, surrounded by dead pirates. This is the first hint that the smuggler is dealing with something very big (potentially Black Sun). As the players climb into their ships and prepare to take off, someone will pick up on the fact that an Imperial Naval detachment is just out of system; the transponder can be used to call them in to deal with the pirates.

So, hopefully, this adventure can rise to a climax with the players escaping from a large space battle between the pirate forces and the Imperial Navy. They'll later meet up at a space station, get paid, then work out their next plans.

[DougRed4]

Sounds like a great plan so far, Ninjaxenomoroph. Just remember that the players will always end up doing what you never expected them to!
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Well, it looks like the current Vampire game is going to be wrapping up tomorrow, and my players will make their characters. I'll update the original post afterwards with the new stuff, like finalized player characters and stuff like that.

[Raven Redstar]

It definitely sounds like a fun opening for an action packed game. I look forward to reading your updates!
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RR
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[Ninjaxenomorph]

Hoo boy. We delved into character creation last night, and some people finished, and some people still have work. The only characters that are finished are the Jawa and the astromech. The R2 unit seems pretty standard, I let him swap out the starfighter skills for other stuff. Looks ready for space transport duty. The Jawa has decided to be named Gozer instead, catchier tagline. He poured almost all of his skills into technical, and justified getting a few dice in Medicine, for cyborging (can't really blame him for that, but with a third of the party being trandos...) The conversation went something like this:

"How did a jawa go to medical school?"
"I have tons of dice in droid programming! I stripped down a few medical droids and learned it from them!"
"... Can't really argue with that, sure."

I'm not entirely sure his build is kosher, but by next friday I am supposed to have their character sheets by email, in addition to backstories.

[garhkal]

This is why i don't like having people make up templates. Looking from all the established templates WEG has, not the mon cal medic or most other medics, not any of the technician templates. The ONLY template i find with an (A) skill starting out is the wealthy physician with (A) Medicine out of heroes and rogues.
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Yeah, I think I am going to make him revise some of his aspects.