Happy Monday, Gamer!
Cold weather blues. It's been ice and snow, and the temperature is under 0 degrees Fahrenheit here in Kansas City. I didn't get to run our first session of Edge of the Empire. I had house guests, fugitives from the dreaded cold weather power outages... well, maybe not fugitives, maybe family...but close enough. I spent some time in Foundry VTT and Googling resources for GM prep. Unlike the Twilight 2000 setup in Foundry, the EotE setup lacks a lot of quality of game conveniences —likely due to licensing concerns. For example, in T2K, you have all the NPC blocks you could ever want out of the box, ready for editing and drag and drop. In the EotE, you'll have to track down 3rd-party resources and import them, or you can add the data yourself. I like the EotE system for Foundry. I'm just saying not all systems are made equal. We're starting play in the Elrood sector of the Outer Rim. Knowing the players are en route to their Duros contact there, I've prepped a problem for each player based on one of their obligations. It's a riff on my usual ‘day in the life’ first session approach. These first problems are to get us using the game's core mechanics. Building dice pools, reading the entrails, using force points.
If you're one of my players...well, spoilers are ahead! The first and easiest problem is a ship-related issue: their YT-1300 freighter malfunctions as it transitions (or not) from hyperspace to the Elrood system. This seems like a thing for the pilot; we’ll see. The Gelgelar Free Port, where they are headed, is the Wookie explorer's stomping grounds, and I'll play that up as various folks attempt to throw gigs at him. I'm assuming these will yield some social or knowledge tests that we can build on now that we've got that first roll of the dice out of the way.
I'll give them the info they're after about the lost refugees when they meet their contact, Gorm. No strings. This is a unanimous player-driven goal; I find nothing of interest fictionally or mechanically. It could become a roleplaying moment. I'll feel out Gorm the Duros contact, and I will do a little worldbuilding through questions I might have —see what shakes out.
After that, I'll find out what the players wish to do next and follow them around. I have an ambush planned for the Outlaw tech character, and I'm not sure where it happens at. We'll lean on the game's mechanics to see if the players spot the tail. This lets us run through Edge of the Empire's combat mechanics. I'd say it should be an easy PC win...but it's the first fight and the last time I thought that a character was mortally wounded! This fight is some foreshadowing I'm doing for a very famous Star Wars character to appear. This first session is the hardest scene framing I’ll likely do. It’s a nice mesh of knocking the dust off the game mechanics, learning who these characters are, and learning how EotE works in Foundry. I expect future sessions to ride the inertia of previous session’s situations.
On my GM wish list for this game is to do the Corellian Run (Sons of Fortune Book), visit a lost Hutt Throneworld (Lords of Nal Hutta Book), play Sabacc (Sons of Fortune Book), and, of course... fight some lightsaber (or four) wielding baddie! For inspiration, I started watching Ashoka on Disney+. I've already seen the Book of Boba Fett and the first season of The Mandalorian when those aired. I'm terrible at staying with a series if there's a significant gap between seasons. I’ve also started a Pinterest mood board —feel free to add to it; if we use it in game, I’ll post about it here!
In other galaxies, we’ve been hunkered down from the cold this week and playing Atma and Gloom in Space! It never ceases to tickle me; the games my people get attached to. It’s never what I might think.
Feel ya from Michigan—it's been a cold one!