I took the day off from Day Job to do Free RPG Day (FRPG) at our Friendly Local Game Store, Game Goblins, along with Mark, my husband. And now I report back on our adventures. Mine–surprise, surprise–involved FFG’s Star Wars RPG.
It’s too bad that FFG hasn’t offered Star Wars modules for Free RPG Day the last few years. But that didn’t stop me from GMing AoR. I pulled out “Operation Shell Game,” the module from the Age of Rebellion Beta, about stealing a prototype ship. This module is pretty simple and it is special to me. When the AoR beta was released, I hadn’t GM’d for years and had pretty much sworn off ever doing so again. But FFG SW made me want to give it one more try–and halfway through running “Operation Shell Game” via Skype, I was having so much fun I forgot I was GMing! So it was a good choice for my first attempt to run a convention type session in several years. Most of my FFG SW GMing has been for my Friday Night Skype group.
My FRPG session was mixed. My three players, a family group, needed to leave a couple hours after we got started. They hadn’t mentioned a time limit, so maybe they didn’t like it. But they seemed regretful, so who knows. Now I did have a good time. Like my first time running “Shell Game,” I had fun. And Players were pretty inventive for the time we played. Like my regular group, they decided that the Imperial station’s “cantina”/mess was the best place to gather information. But their method differed. Having a female Engineer/Saboteur (along with a Soldier/Medic and a Soldier/Commando), they went with the classic “Have a few drinks with an Officer and lure him to room,” to get a code cylinder and uniform. Not a bad tactic and it worked–they even used a Triumph to have his cylinder be usable to enter High-Security areas. I also re-used a bit from my first run, allowing other PCs to overhear a buzzed detention trooper going on about a female Rebel prisoner who just wouldn’t learn that “escape is futile” and recall that one of the missing SpecOps team (a possible secondary objective) was a woman.
Again, this group took a different tactic from the other. My Skype group made the painful decision to leave the SpecOps prisoners to their fate, because they felt that, best case, they would rescue them but fail the primary mission to take or destroy the prototype, and the most likely outcome was failing both. This group opted to attempt both, feeling the advantage of extra allied NPCs would outweigh the drawbacks of extra time, objectives being at opposite ends of the station, and doing the second mission while the Imperials were on alert. Knowing what they were up against, I had misgivings about the plan, especially as it involved a three person party splitting up, the Medic (with uniform and code cylinder) trying to get into the R&D Hangar while the Commander and Saboteur freeing the SpecOps team from Detention–both High-Security areas. Plus, I had already decided that the missing Imp officer, who had access to the R&D Hangar, would result in increased security and patrols everywhere at the time I okayed the Triumph use. (Something I didn’t tell the players.) I would have loved to see how this played out, but at this point, the group realized it was time to leave.
Meanwhile Mark found a D&D 5e game. This was a “coordinated” game, with three tables of players and three GMs that lasted about eight hours. Each table was a party of a different race–Elf, Human, Dwarf–and each party was working for their own race’s interests. But there was one BBEG they were all up against: a necromancer (?) creating zombies. So the world was at stake. Mark told me it worked out pretty well, “except for the final combat when everyone was on the same battlemat.” The problem wasn’t just the number of PCs–around four or five per table–but that there was so much “interaction between them” even though the tables were still separately run. He had a good time playing his Human Wizard, whom he claims was named “Oz the Great and Glorious.” (No, I am certain this was the wizard’s name–why do you ask? It is totally something Mark would name a PC, with his sense of humor.)
In addition to the four or five FRPG tables, Game Goblins patrons were playing their usual assortment of games. There was at least one Magic: The Gathering table (the CCG is a big portion of the store’s business). I saw at least two games of FFG’s Star Wars miniatures. I wish I had had time to watch or talk to the players. Other patrons were taking advantage of Game Goblins’ Demo Games, which are Board and card games that patrons can check out to play in the store.
We also gathered free materials for several different games. Again, I still wish FFG had offered a Star Wars module. But it seems to me that many of the bigger names in the industry don’t bother any more. The best-known, to me, publisher represented was Little Rock, Arkansas-based Troll Lord Games, creator of Castles & Crusades. Overall it was a fun day of gaming and I hope to do it next year. Over the next few weeks, I will be looking over the freebies we did get and giving an overview in this space.
Linda Whitson
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