New member, new campaign new GM

[Bren]

[HumanFlie]

Hey all,
We had session #2 yesterday. For those interested, here's what happened and how it went.

The rebel spec ops Colonel Larcen Bennet (NPC) sent the adventurers to a place called "The Nest". It is the home pirate base of the commandeered Ghotroc light frieghter the PC's are using. They are sent there to clear it out and bring intel on it back so that it may be used by the alliance. The base is a very primitive asteroid base along the lines of what is shown in Hideouts and Strongholds. They manage to get the ship inside (not before damaging the airlock door and miraculously repairing the airlock door with an impromptu spacewalk) and get the jump on the remaining pirates. They do this by conning them on board to help unload. (Very ala star wars a new hope). After killing/subduing everyone they manage to question the boss about how many more pirates are on the base. But they don't ask him much else. At this point power in the base fails. Only some minimal life support remains.
Two PC's stay aboard the ship, and the other three set out to explore/clear out the rest of the base. Through some more con/intimidation/creative comlink use they manage to get the remaining 4 pirates to surrender.
This was basically the end of the session. A lot of little other stuff happened but that's the gist of it.
So it was really just an average session. I wasn't getting a good vibe that evening and felt like I wasn't able to keep the pace going. Being a new group they were not roleplaying much. They were also making lots of suggestions to do different things but then just would not do anything. One player is a great roleplayer but insists on being the group antagonist....something that would be great with a more experienced group but not so great with this one.
My inexperience as GM is shining through....but I'm slowly getting better. Learning how much info to withhold and how much to give.
I think a big thing that put a damper on the session was that they didn't end up finding any of the neat stuff I left behind. Letters, logs, journals, emails not to mention a room full of slaves (including one of the PC's father) and loot because they hadn't gotten to those rooms yet so really it was a dungeon crawl but they never got the great story bits.
Oh well. Next session can only be better.
Thanks!

[Guardian_A]

Any session that you grew more comfortable with the rules and everyone had fun is a good session.

A good dungeon crawl isnt always a bad thing, god knows I've had a few sessions like that over the years.

It sounds like you have set the stage for a very interesting session next time. I'll be looking forward to hearing how it goes. Good luck!

[garhkal]

Nice work..
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[Bren]

Sounds like you did well.

[taedae]

i am very impressed about the depth of the plot you have for this game. its really interesting and i have enjoyed reading the outcomes of the sessions. please keep us posted on whats going on.
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[Whill]

Agreed! Thanks for sharing.
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[HumanFlie]

So we had another session, this one went better (in my opinion). Here's the recap.
I send each person in the game a reminder email about the time and the place for the game. It also includes a catch up of what happened in the last session. The text crawl creator at starwars.com is awesome for this.
The PC's continue exploring the primitive pirate base. Through a lot of exploring they find the pirate living quarters, a main generator room (the base is presently running on minimal back up power due to the main generator being out of fuel), the operations room, the lead pirate's quarters and 50 slaves in a separate section of the base. Scattered through these places are letters, emails and a journal. They point to a few different things. 1. Clues as to the sender and receiver of the odd package on board the PC's commandeered ship. 2. Indications of a mutiny within the pirate organization due to the poor treatment of slaves. 3. Clues as to who is buying the slaves (hinting at the fact that an imperial bureaucrat named Trave is doing the purchasing). 4. An indication that the pirates have another ship named "Bantha" that is a fuel hauler. It is 2 days over due. 5. A list of 50 names (slaves) with a five digit number beside each. (It takes PC's a while to figure out that these are all codes to unlock the slaves' neck collars.) They also find an old space probe (think the Voyager probe from the 1970's) with a crude star map and other info on it.
One of the slaves happens to be one of the PC's father (we're losing that player so I thought it an ok time to do something like this and it fits in with the PC's back story). The PC (Jarus) is from the planet NuRoh. His family has been there for a few thousand years and most knowledge of their history has disappeared. His father Tironos left NuRoh in search of this knowledge and disappeared. The inhabitants of NuRoh are in fact refugees from the planet Fyodos (see the planets collection) which suffered a nuclear war a long time ago. Now Fyodos still has inhabitants. The pirate leader found an old space probe which led him to this yet undiscovered (for my purposes) planet. Ahhhh a fresh source of slaves, one of the people taken as a slave was Tironos. He found his ancestral home only to be taken as a slave by a pirate! By chance (and the force as they are both force sensitive) Jarus finds his father.
The freighter they have is not big enough to carry everyone off.
Two of the PC's return to their handler Larcen Bennet on the good ship Fowbin. Long story short he says we can't spare any ships, but he can arrange to send a rival pirate to the asteroid under false pretense. You can ambush them, and steal their ship. (FYI I'm using Kal-Tan-Shi and Sscha'tirix from Alliance Intelligence Reports as a rough guideline)
So that is the long and short of it. Lots of exploring, questioning, and a couple of "round tables" amongst the PC's. The role playing is definitely getting better (on my part too). I am having trouble figuring out a fair distribution of character points. I don't want anyone to be discouraged for getting too few points and they are generally all putting in good effort. I said 14 a piece total for 2 4 hour sessions. (7 for each session) That is probably a bit much but they did get a lot done.
Sorry about the sloppiness and length of this post. I just quickly typed it out before bed. Thanks for reading!

[Bren]

[Guardian_A]

It sounds like you had a really good session.

As for giving out Character Points. Depending on how your players use their CPs and how you run your game has a lot of bearing on what is appropriate. In time, you will learn what is right for you and your group.

Some GMs will give out CPs at a rate of 1 an hour, or 5 every four hours. Other GMs give out CPs based on how much the players accomplished, or some GMs give a set number of points for each session

Myself, I like to make my players earn CPs. At the end of each session, I go through a series of questions with my players, for each question they can give me a satisfactory answer for, they usually get one CP.

Some examples:
One point automatically.
Did the character learn something useful during the session?
Did the character do something unexpected with a skill, ability, or power?
Did the character do something particularly heroic/impressive during the session?
Did the character accomplish everything they set out to accomplish?
Did the character(s) come up with a brilliant plan that helped/improved the characters situation?
Did the character(s) complete a story?

Some nights, I will give a couple of extra CPs if the players were particularly productive.

Two more things to consider. How many CPs do your players save for character development, and how many do they spend during play? Also, if you are going to be running characters for a long time, you will want to consider how quickly you want those characters to grow. You dont want your PCs to be able to go toe-to-toe with your main villan half way through your campaign.

With all of that said, there is no right or wrong way to give out CPs. If it "Feels" like you are giving out enough CPs and your players arent constantly complaining about you beeing greedy, then you are probably doing it right.

[Bren]

Well said, Guardian_A.

[Praxian]

[garhkal]

[Bren]

[HumanFlie]

@garhkal 14 a piece for two four hour sessions (7 for each session)
So after two evenings of play = 8 hours total they had 14 CP's. Or 7 for each session.

@everyone
Thanks for the feedback everyone. I like the question system. I think asking my players questions will urge them in the right direction for next session. It'll help guide them as to what to do to earn more, and show that I'm not just being arbitrary. Good input.
I think I'm going to do a mix of both. Have some questions prepared for me to answer about what the characters did. Perhaps even tell them things that they missed and could have earned CP's for.

They are working a little more as a team but their characters are not getting along terribly well. One player (and his character) in particular is still being difficult. A "mistake" I made was getting them to make characters completely independant of each other with some moderately elaborate back stories so the characters ended up being not very like minded. I do need to craft something that will help unite them a bit more. That will come. I also didn't fore see the players making adventurers who weren't into adventuring.