This series follows the trials, tribulations, successes, and failures of a fairly inexperienced GM who has recently picked up the hobby after a long time away. It aims to assist new GM’s by examining what worked, didn’t work, and what failed miserably as he spins up new campaigns, modules, encounters, and adventures for his friends and family in Fantasy Flight Games’ Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion/Force and Destiny system.
June 2016, just over one year ago, I jumped head-first back into a hobby I left a long time ago once college ended and marriage and children and career filled in the gaps of life. I hadn’t sat at a table with funny dice, paper, and a pencil in almost twenty years. So this column is a bit of a departure as I look at where I was with the hobby when I was younger, what brought me back, and my trials and tribulations along the way.
When I was 12, a good friend at a sleepover pulled out a strange red box with a dragon on it, and I was hooked right after that. For the next decade, I usually was at least dabbling in the hobby. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Heroes Unlimited, and Dungeons and Dragons were some of my favorites I played growing up. I spun up games off and on, made characters in my free time, friends and I took turns running games, and RPG’s were a fairly consistent part of life. Then college hit and my high school sweetheart and I got pretty serious and it faded back. Played Magic the Gathering a while in college but the RPGs died out. I worked full-time and went to school full time for years and had no real days off.
Then marriage, kids, career and… all but video games fell by the wayside.
Fast forward to the end of 2015. My children, particularly my son, were getting older. They’re crazy into Star Wars and games. We had invested heavily into X-Wing miniatures and the upcoming Armada game. And over the course of time in our friendly local game store, I kept passing by the Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion books on the shelf. After a while, the reminders of fun with RPG’s in the past came flooding back, and my kids were getting old enough to play so… I bought the Age of Rebellion core book and started reading. I always figured it could be sold to a gamer if I didn’t dig it.
But then I got to the chapter about the narrative dice system, and everything changed. I was hooked and I’d never played a game. The narrative dice system did it all and I’ll explain why. Whenever I played D & D, or any other game with a d20 or d6 system, I always felt like I was getting into a good roleplaying game. I had a concept for the character and his story and what I wanted to bring to the narrative, etc. But then, once the game started, I felt that stuff fall away replaced by squares and tactics, basically turning it into a board game with a paper and pencil. Now, that was fun, but I always felt the roleplaying aspects of the game would fall away once the game started. But this narrative dice system forces the story to the forefront, and I’d never seen that before in an RPG. What a concept. Genius. I was sold. Just reading about the narrative dice system felt like Star Wars.
I started telling friends about it while running my kids through the Beginner box for AoR. After a while, these friends started wanting to play and soon, had talked me into giving it a go, GMing a game for the first time in 20 years. I spent the next couple months getting characters rolled up, listening to lots of the Order 66 podcast, and planned my campaign and started things off. June of 2016 marked the first adventure for Viper Squad, a SpecForce group working officially for the Rebellion. We played through Dead in the Water, the adventure in the AoR GM Kit to start things off, and we’ve been playing for a couple hours a week almost every week for a calendar year.
So, how’ve I been doing? How would I grade myself getting back into the GM chair? I would say… B or B-. I’m very hard on myself and despite my players telling me I am doing great, I think of so many things I need to remember and improve.
I forget so much while I play. Usually, these are things a GM uses and should always be part of the game mechanics. I can easily list them:
- Adversary talents – I make sure to give proper NPCs Adversary talents, but then forget to upgrade the difficulty when my players attack them. Last mission, a Big Bad had Adversary 3 and I never upgraded the check. Sometimes I remember but, it’s 50/50.
- Handling – I always forget this when people make piloting checks.
- Destiny Pool – I go for long stretches forgetting to use them narratively. I use them often for checks but, not much for narrative purposes.
- Duty – I forget at times to build in ways for the players to add to their Duty with situations.
- Boosts and Setbacks – When players grant or accept boost dice or setback dice from Advantage or Threat, half the time I forget to get them into the next check.
The narrative dice system has been everything I hoped it could be. The story comes first, mechanics second. The system begs for the GM to get rid of the “me vs them” mentality, and the game pushes itself towards being its own movie. Me and my players took months to adapt to the new system, and we still have some progress to make, but we’ve had the best roleplaying moments of the campaign in recent months.
So now, a year later, and I’m running two campaigns with a total of 13 players, staff writing for d20 Radio, and made a ton of new friends in the GamerNation. I have had a lot change in the last two years thanks to this hobby and the amazing system that Fantasy Flight Games and Jay Little invented. It re-lit a fire for the hobby again, and I think I’ve turned my son into a lifer because of his love of the game and Star Wars. My wife has also joined in, so now “Family Game Night” is the Star Wars RPG, and it doesn’t get much better than that.
Here’s to 12 more months of lightsabers, blasters, droids, Star Destroyers, and the Force!
Scott Alden
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