Advice on Running d6 Star Wars

[borithan]

I have already posted here a couple of times, but I am soon quite likely going to be running a Star Wars game, probably with the d6 rules (it is possible I will be using the new FFG ruleset instead, but that isn't very likely).

While I have been a player for years , I am not being the most experienced GM (I have run a couple of games, but not with the current group I will be running it for, and not for very long) and I am hoping for any advice specific to running a Star Wars d6 game, and also if anyone has any answers to the following questions:

Which books are most recommended? I have the 2nd edition rulebook (not the revised and extended), and a handful of others, but I was just wondering what people considered the most useful supplements, if any?

How is a movement failure meant to apply to a person? The movement chapter refers to rolling if moving more than half move a turn (at least over rough terrain) yet the movement failure chart seems to only apply to vehicles. OK, on the lower scale it can be applied to people ("You stumble, -1d from your actions."), but going into a spin, or even suffering 7D damage for running flat out over rough terrain don't quite seem appropriate, even if very unlikely ("Oh. Right... your tripped over, flipped head over heels and have landed on your skull crushing your spine... your dead. Sorry").

[Guardian_A]

Advice? I cant think of anything specific to Star Wars d6. The best advice that I can think of at the moment is to let the players know that you are a little inexperienced in the GM department, and remember that its more important to have fun than it is to get everything right.

As for recommended books? A lot of that depends on what kind of campaign you intend to play, but here is a list of the books that I have found most useful over the years (There are probably others, but these come to mind):
Galaxy Guide 4: Alien Races
Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters
Galaxy Guide 12: Aliens - Enemies & Allies
Alien Encounters
Stock Ships
Rebel Sourcebook
Imperial Sourcebook
Tales of the Jedi Companion
Fantastic Technology (Any of them)
Pirates & Privateers

Also, if you can find a copy of the R&E Rulebook, it might be worth a look.

[cheshire]

Really, what books are the best to get depends greatly on your own GMing style. I was always attracted to starships, and so I bought a lot of starship-oriented books such as Stock Ships, and Pirates and Privateers. Later, I found more uses for setting books such as Wretched Hives of Scum and Villainy, Platt's Starport Guide, and Hideouts and Strongholds.

There are some general purpose stat books that wind up being useful regardless. However, they are hardly necessary. Though if you find them cheap, pick them up.
Alien Encounters - Basic aliens stats for pretty much anything ever covered in D6
Gundark's Fantastic Technology - Just a bunch of weapons and equipment to give to your characters

The basic ones I would really suggest you get if you're trying to develop the basis for an overall good D6 gaming library is:
2nd Edition Revised and Expanded - You can certainly run the game with the 2nd edition. All books are compatible with both 2ndE and the R&E, but the layout is much more attractive in the R&E, and I like some of the rule variants better. Though there are varying opinions as to which version is better.

Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters - Even if you never run a tramp freighter campaign, there are so many good starship upgrade rules in there, that you're almost bound to use some of them. There are also great suggestions as to how to make certain types of adventures. It just gives generally good guidelines as to how to make something properly challenging with a narrative focus. Love it!

Tales of the Jedi Companion - The character stats are horrible in the book, and there are a lot of errors, but it has an almost complete list of Force Powers (I think they're only missing Merge Senses which was released in a later adventure journal). Also, how to build lightsabers, some optional rules for using Force powers in more flexible ways.

On movement, I handle it a few different ways. If the person fails, I simply say that they don't run as far as they intended to, as they temporarily lost their footing, stumbled, but managed to stay upright. If they fail badly, then I'll say that they trip and fall, and getting up counts as an action next round, adding to their MAPs (multiple action penalties). If they fail badly AND get a 1 on the wild die, I might give them a sprained ankle, essentially halving their movement, or giving them a -2D to all running/walking based skills.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[Grimace]

Since you've got the 2nd edition book, I'll let you know what I mostly used, as that's the book I used for many years before getting 2nd R&E (and still used it after getting the R&E).

The Star Wars Sourcebook is VERY helpful, as it not only provide a variety of things to use, but it also very much helps with immersing your brain into Star Wars.

Beyond that one book (and the core book), everything else just depends on what you have.

The Rebel Sourcebook if you're going to focus much more seriously on the Rebellion. The Imperial Sourcebook if you want to heavily use the Empire as more than just Stormtroopers, TIE fighters and Star Destroyers shooting things up. Scouts if you're going to be doing a heavily exploration type of game.

Beyond that, it all depends on what you're running and how much detail you want. Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, Alien Encounters, Tales of the Jedi...all are good but are much more specific in focus.

As far as advice in running the game: Keep it simple!

Your question about the movement failure is a perfect example. Don't spent a lot of time dwelling on it during the game. If the character failed the roll, do what seems right at the time. Are they just walking? A slight stumble, but no falling down. Running? A trip, and possible fall if they don't make a ....Moderate DEX roll. Just do what seems right and don't worry about checking over specifics in the book.

Check for specifics after the game, or before the next game. During the game, keep things moving and don't worry about doing everything exactly by the book. Remember what it suggests: Pick a difficulty and have the players roll! Simple and effective and doesn't require a lot of rules checking.

When you're going with challenges, it's always easier to add more bad guys than it is to reasonably take bad guys away from the battle. So if you're going to throw some Stormtroopers at the player characters, pick a number, but don't go overboard. If there's 5 PCs, throw 6 or 7 stormtroopers at them. If the characters are mowing through them too fast, it's always easy to have reinforcements show up to add to the difficulty. So if you give them 5 thugs to take on but they beat 4 of the thugs before the thugs even get to act, then maybe the REST of the thug's gang shows up next round, and another 8 thugs come around the corner to join in the fight. That's easier to do than throwing 30 thugs at the group only to find out that the characters can only take 6 down and the remaining 24 thugs beat the tar out of the player characters. You can't logically, or easily, have half of the thugs decide that they don't want to stomp the faces of the characters, or randomly decide to leave the battle.

So start on the lower side and work up if you need to.

Hope this helps.

[thedemonapostle]

if ya have internet available during your game, id recommend browsing the D6Holocron wiki

http://d6holocron.com/wiki/index.php?title=D6_Holocron_Wiki

or if ya want to download the stuff look here

http://www.d6holocron.com/downloads/
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[garhkal]

Though grimace points out a good point (know your players capacity to take/deal damage), there are times it is GOOD to overwhelm them, as it shows that there will (and should) be times RUNNING is the best option, and/or not get into combat at all.

Also, quiz your players, ask them what they prefer. Rise of the Empire type time frame. old republic? Sometime after the films? Before??
Do they like lots of combat (screams rebel spec forces group), or are they more talkers and solvers of issues (fringer group, or investigative group)?
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[BSDOblivion]

what garhkal went over is usually all i do in prep for a game. just ask what kind of game they want, subtracting what your not willing to deal with (sith game, or evil campaign). at that point i tend to leave it to the players to pull up materials they are interested in (equipment and such). it leaves you more time for the story and challenges and makes them work for it.
as a story teller advice in general, for all games, i would plead to be flexible with your story. if the players end up going someplace else or doing something you did not plan or intend on, just go with it. if they can pull it off they may as well get away with it and change the story to fit. i have had players (in another game) rewrite 2.5 years of game (real world time) with a mean use of time travel. all that meant was i had some more writing to do. basically go with the flow and be creative
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[borithan]

Thanks for the replies.

The players know I am not very experienced as a GM, even if we are all experienced players. Part of the reason I suggested the system to them was because it looked relatively easy to wing it with (Someone average who is trained in something has 4d in their skill. This NPC is better than average... 5d!). It was certainly probably a better fit than the original plan which was to run a time travel game using the GURPS system... both system heavy and a kind of game where keeping track of what could/should/would happen was going to be a bit of a headache...

My aim would to try not to overwhelm them until I had a bit more of a grasp of player capabilities.

As far as setting goes, that is generally been left to the GM in our group, as long as we know what we are going in for before hand. The GM has to be able to want to run the story. Personally I will probably be running it about the period of the original films, and with a pre-original trilogy history closer to the one established in the rulebook than the one established by the prequel films. Probably a more "fringer" style campaign.

Oh, and how much do ships cost? The core rulebook doesn't list that, yet says repairs cost a certain fraction of the ships cost. More importantly it would also be handy to know as a starting point for judging what to set job rewards at.

[cheshire]

Starship cost? Well... if you have 10,000 you can almost buy your own ship for that.

Just kidding. Really, starship pricing is kind of a mess. They didn't have a system where you could plug in values based on ship stats and have a value. There are a couple of users who have made charts that help you do that and arrive at a close approximation. However, WEG more eyeballed it, and sometimes weren't terribly consistent.

Starship cost is usually included in the starship stats. So, depending on what kind of ship you want, you'll pay a wide array of prices for it. Strangely, the 2nd Ed. book doesn't seem to list the prices for the ships listed. It's odd, the R&E lists them, and so do almost all supplements.

Do you want us to post the cost of the ships in the rulebook, or are you planning on getting another print source for your ships? Pirates and Privateers is a great resource for finding ships, if you're interested in that.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[borithan]

Oh, I wasn't really looking for a formula, just some idea of the rough costs. I thought I had seen prices in other books, but the basic rulebook didn't seem to offer any guidance. The only hints are the Templates that started with freighters both had debt, but the difference between the two is big, and there is no indication about whether that debt covered the whole ship, just part of the ship, or a debt with rather runaway interest applied.

[cheshire]

The answers to your questions are largely story-related. Thus, there are several answers, though most of those answers are given in Galaxy Guide 6: Tramp Freighters. They have chapters dedicated to how to handle loans. Right now they're only selling for between $25-$35. I'll say that it is probably worth $25 for the value of the information in it. However, it's not worth that much given the knowledge of what happens in the market for the books. If you watch carefully for three weeks you'll snag it for much less. I think I grabbed one once for 75 cents! $10-$15 is more likely. I can give you brief outlines of what to do if you don't plan on grabbing the book, though.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[cheshire]

BTW, if you're planning on buying, I may have tracked down a less expensive copy.
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Before we take any of this too seriously, just remember that in the middle episode a little rubber puppet moves a spaceship with his mind.

[garhkal]

As a brief rundown..

Barloz medium freighters run 18500 used
A Nella 342 runs 22000 used
A Ghtroc 720 (base book one of the 2 offerings for light freighters) rus 98500 credits new, 23000 used
The most common, the YT-1300 runs 100K new, 25k used
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[borithan]

Thanks. Thought it would be something like that, but I wasn't sure.

I am thinking I would want to try and get a copy of Tramp Freighters. If it has guides on smuggling and stuff, and has guidance on modding ships that kind of sounds perfect. Sure the players won't want to be running round with a stock yt-1300 for long.

Is it worth getting Pirates and Privateers as well?

[garhkal]

Its got great info on setting up pirate groups, running them, some sample groups as well as sample swag from pirates (other ships!)
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!