Adventure Writer's Block

[KageRyu]

I was curious, how do some of you deal with it?
I am scheduled to run tonight, but a critical part of my adventure is not ready - not even close. I knew what I wanted to happen back before my surgery but never got a chance to get it on paper. Since getting out (and continuing to battle after-effects) I just haven't been able to get my thoughts together and get what I need on paper. I can't clearly remember what I had planned either. Every time I sit down to work on it I just draw a complete blank.
My groups getting antsy because it's been 3 weeks, and they wish to play. I could probably wing something, which would undoubtedly end up taking my campaign off course (and be no wheres near as rewarding as if I have it planned).
Worse, a new player is joining, and I have no idea what type of character he will want, or if I'll be able to stear him towards a template that will be easily incorporated into the campaign I planned.

None of the action has started in my campaign yet. So far it's all been back-story, role playing, and interaction. The Campaign is Pre-Empire, Pre-War timeline. One player is a Privateer/Freighter captain who's father was killed by pirates, so he hunts them. The other is a Jedi apprentice, who's master (and odd one of sorts) is a travel obsessed Duros who knew the other players father and rents space on the ship. The players are on Balmorra, for several Reasons, and already have some clues and information leading them to Ithor once they finish on Balmorra. I'd love to get some action in there, but don't want to have a random bar fight, or throw off the campaign. Unfortunately, a lot of the easy ideas for incorporating quick action I can't see easily happening on a highly developed world on the edge of the core worlds (though I know big cities have crime).
I'm thinking maybe have the Privateer catch sight of soemone, or a group, with the insignia of the Pirates that killed his father...but I am concerned this may be too "cliche" (though since Balmorra is known for weapons and Battledroids, and is not truly part of the Republic, just an ally that draws criticism for it's trade practices, this could make sense the pirates are purchasing weapons or ordinance here).

Any thoughts or suggestions?
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[Guardian_A]

One way to deal with writers block is to send the characters off on a little side quest. By sending them off on a side quest, you dont have to advance your main storyline and because of that, you can do pretty much anything you want. Take a look at some of your old WEG books for inspiration if you cant come up with anything else. Sometimes, using an existing adventure, or using an existing adventure for ideas is often a good place to start. That said, sometimes just winging it can be fun as well.

Also, if you dont know what you new player is going to be playing, have a group BS session before the game starts so everyone can figure out how the new player will fit into the group. A lot of the time, these discussions will help give you ideas for how to introduce that character.

[KageRyu]

I think I may have figured something out. Was able to get some important notes jotted down on the most critical portion of the adventure (the archaelogical find in the long burried Jedi Temple on Balmorra) though much rougher and less organized than I like (still figuring out how I want to tie in the Syth-Alchemical Mutated Colicoids from Bugtown though...I know I had a plan, but can't remember it).

For action, I am most definately going to go with the whole encounter of some members from the Pirate force - I can run that fairly improvised as I have no time left to write it up really. Also going to have an encounter with some Colicoids, and a brief brush with a dark side cultist as something valuable gets stolen. May not even get it all in tonight.

Would still love to hear how others here handle writer's block when down to the wire?
_________________
"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[KageRyu]

[vanir]

I always start by getting an idea of where I am.

Balmorra is next to Kuat, on a little spine they share running between the Hydian Way and Trellen Trade Run. Kuat is on the Core side and Balmorra the Colonies side of the border, right in the guts of the galactic western Slice. They're in the middle of major deepspace hauler routes and shipyards there. It's in a heavy traffic region between the Core and Colonies.

Ithor is way up in the New Territories, on the Celanon Spur past Ord Mantell. To get there they'll have to take the Hydian Way and that means going through Brentaal crossroads, which is the turn off for Coruscant and traffic is customs regulated. They'd continue up the Hydian rimward/north to Celanon in the Outer Rim, then change course to the Celanon Spur and head coreward to Ithor in the Mid Rim.

So they're going to get pulled out of hyperspace at Brentaal among surveillance beacons, then directed by a traffic control to the jump off point to continue their journey. From Balmorra this is only going to be a few days travel.

It would then be a few more days up the Hydian Way to the distant Outer Rim, it's a fast hyperlane. There's not much up here until you get to Celanon. If the party hasn't travelled to Ithor before they may need to purchase charts for the Celanon Spur here.
Celanon can be an interesting place to have to do anything, planet's full of con artists, although is very affluent. I'm guessing it has a lot of casinos. What happens in Celanon stays in Celanon?

Once on the Celanon Spur travel would be slower per physical distance, so a few more days to Ithor. You pass by Dathomir and Cathar on the way, which would be interesting places to have a mishap.

To keep moderate astrogation difficulties it might be best to break up the journey into three sections: Balmorra to Brentaal, Brentaal to Celanon, Celanon to Ithor. Assuming you have updated star charts, keeping in mind traffic difficulties particularly around Brentaal, I'd suggest an increase of astrogation difficulty by one level for each section combined without dropping out of hyperspace, so a difficult to make Celanon direct, very difficult to make Ithor direct, plus modifiers. I would add modifiers depending the timespan since charts for the Celanon Spur were last updated at Celanon, charts for the Hydian Way would've been updated at Balmorra when docked so are a given.

When reducing astrogation difficulties by adding course time I use the overall distance guideline of within a sector = hrs, greater distances = days, for time added when reducing difficulties, as it gives more realistic results, and essentially long, complicated plotted routes spanning sections of the galaxy collate high difficulties so generally people slow down in places and the whole journey takes a while even bouncing between major hyperlanes. If it wasn't for the hyperlanes such a journey would take several weeks to months. So be generous with plotting difficulty scores to suit the journey and how the PCs wish to travel it, as there are sidequests in the making there too, particularly when they get complacent or ambitious.

Keep in mind local pirates, particularly along the Celanon Spur can afford to travel at much faster plotted journey rates with lower difficulties because they're locals, so overtaking the Party fleet/ship with pirates in out of the way places such as when they pass Dathomir and Cathar isn't too difficult for them, once they log the PCs mass shadows and calculate their path it's not hard to insert an obstacle ahead of them and force them back to realspace for a pirate assault.
Pirates along the 'Spur could operate through shady Nalroni agents on Celanon which take note of travellers updating that particular star chart, and gain their departure times by greasing the palms of starport officials.

[KageRyu]

[vanir]

Star Wars Essential Atlas (Wallace and Fry)

It's hard to describe how invaluable, complete and authoritive it is unless you buy a copy and read it, worth doing. I got mine on amazon. It's become on of my most important SWRPG tools now, bringing the space travel dimension to the game where it's just peacemeal before, the whole galaxy and tons of routes are mapped.

Wookieepedia and LucasArts sources uses it for planet locations by grid reference now. So Balmorra is written as ref.M10 at wookieepedia and this is the star map that shows that.

Reason I started describing your next journey is because you said you were to depart to Ithor next, and the journey is often a sidequest in itself. Unless I have something specific in mind for a location sidequest where we are, if I get a writers block on the campaign and want to interject some action for the players, I find moving things along and finding action in the act of doing some forward motion tends to solve itself. And being scifi a space journey is an adventure.

Sort of comes from D&D days, when stalling in a town rather than introducing a hook in that town, quick pick another location to journey to for some obscure reason and hit the overland encounters, which you can turn into a bandit sidequest or hunt a dragon or whatever. It gets the players into action, in the midst of having a sense that things are moving along.
Players get bored easily, if you get bogged, they get bored. Answer is always when in doubt, move it along. Don't stick around for it to get boring in the same old town doing yet another dungeon crawl.

[KageRyu]

[Guardian_A]

Just a stray thought:

If the characters have a ship, they could try to leave the system, only to have engine troubles (Something they cant fix due to either lack of skill or lack of parts). When they set out a distress beacon, someone shows up to help, or so they think. It turns out that their helpers are either Pirates or Slavers. Either way, the characters end up captured and rescue a prisoner during their escape (The new player's character) as they snag the parts they need and make their escape. After cobbling together their repairs, they realize that there is only one habitable system that they can reliably reach (Wherever you want them to go in the first place.)

This would give you an excuse to put them back into space, but drop them back on planet during your next session for whatever you had planned before you added the new player.



Characters. Random rant & an idea to encourage interaction:

Players get bored easily? Your group must be VERY different from mine. We were playing Pathfinder yesterday. One of the treasures they stumbled across was "Gate Rings." (Two rings, a player can move an object through one, and it appears from the other. You can also reach through one to grab something near the other.) It turned into a nearly two hour BS session about all the things that the players could do with the rings. All I had to do is set back, laugh, and moderate the conversation a little bit. While this BS session was longer than most, our players have a tendancy towards these kinds of in-character conversations.

If you want to encourage in-character conversation, there are some things you can do. Our group passes poker chips around the table (Three per person). Each person gets a different color (We have 6 regulars, and two others who join us infrequently. Since we only had 4 colors of poker chips, we turned a black sharpie on three chips of each color to create an assortment of different chips.) The players are encouraged to give their chips away when other players help them, or do something impressive. Where as the players only have three chips, the GM has a nice big stack and hands out chips any time he/she feels someone deserves a chip (Enjoyable in-character interactions, furthering the story, etc) Now, the chips actually have a significant value for the players. Any chips that the players earn during the game can be spent the same way as character points. Also, any extra chips left over at the end of the day are added to the player's Character Points in addition to any that are awarded by the GM at the end of the session. You might or might not want to power the number of CPs you award at the end of your sessions to compensate, but I find that players usually spend their chips almost as fast as they earn them. (For Pathfinder/D&D, we do the same thing, but the chips are worth 25xp, and can be spent in advance of a D20 roll to roll two dice and take the higher result.)

[KageRyu]

I was really looking for ideas and suggestions to happen on the planet. Having them leave the planet would have made no sense, as they just arrived at the end of the previous session, and hadn't even left the ship to do what they went there for. I just wanted to get some action in there, but was having trouble coming up with ideas.

I did come up with a few, and tried to introduce them, but my players were more interested in milling about, doing almost nothing, hiding or avoiding anything that even looked like trouble, and splitting up to just wander the city aimlessly. I'm thinking I might need to introduce a strong, charismatic NPC to motivate them (generally don't like having NPC's lead or strongarm players, but these guys have no sense of direction no matter how many clues I drop). The main plotline's at least moving forward.

I ended up having some of the Pirates from the one players backstorry show up (and he swore revenge on them for killing his father) - would have been a great little skirmish...but he decided he didn't want to mess with them

Also had a skirmish with some angry Colicoids planned - having the cargo the Shipowner was carrying be bound for a small town very near the Colicoid infestation. We haven't gotten to it yet, but the player was seriously considering just dumping the cargo until his NPC co-pilot advised him not only wouldn't he get paid, but he'd most likely end up in hot water with the shipper. Left off on the verge of this planned skirmish though, with all the players piled into a Repulsor-truck, carrying a load of agricultural supplies to the border towns near Bugtown and the Colicoid nests. Next session I might pick up in-media res to facilitate events.

The most excitement happened when the Jedi's master sprung a surprise training session using three remotes while he was languishing in the bath.

As to trying to do the poker chip thing, it would be problematic with this group. They are all slightly older than me (only a few years) and we are all old and stubborn. At least one of them has GMed as was trying to help me reign them in when they were all talking at once, all asking me to look stuff up (and they all want answers imediately...the whole group has patience issues).
_________________
"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[Guardian_A]

I try to stay away from using in-group NPCs as more than meat shields for the rest of the group unless I have no other choice. Have you tried to "bring out the leader" in your group? I've found that if you put your characters in a position where they need to obtain an item, or have to help someone important to them, or even just backing them into a corner in a situation and give them a moment to think about their options, they have a tendancy to to buckle down and tackle the task at hand. As often as not, one member of the group will emerge as something of a leader in that kind of situation.

To me, having a bunch of players who are constantly asking questions is one of the most frusterating things that can happen as a GM. See if you can get your players to read up on the rules, at least the ones that most apply to themselves (Have them read a chapter apropriate to their character, the Starship pilot reads the "Space Travel and Combat" chapter. The Jedi reads the "The Force" chapter, the gun nut reads the "Combat and Injuries" section, etc.) Once the players know the rules that relate to their own characters, they will have a LOT less questions. Also, as they each learn different parts of the book, they will be able to start helping each other with rules questions (This is another thing that I will sometimes give chips out for.)

One way to deal with patience issues is to get them to roll for it. If everyone asks something at once, make them roll a D6, high number gets an answer first. Otherwise, just answer in the order the questions come.

Keep in mind, the first few sessions with new players will always result in a LOT of questions, its not (usually) because they are trying to be a pain, its because they want to learn and be better players.

[KageRyu]

[Guardian_A]

[vanir]

I completely get where you're coming from Kage, I can't even talk about some gaming sessions where the players just wanted to confound every possible attempt at GMing them, defy any prepared material to the point of having to tear it up and throw it away, and then finally character interaction in game turning into player arguments, quite violent ones out of game. It was tear your hair out stuff where you're just wondering what any of you are doing there even trying.

My gaming group was always hard arses because they were way more experienced in RPG than me when we first started playing, they knew games I'd never even heard of. So there was always the fact they were definitely RPG enthusiasts and devoted to the game to keep me thinking it was just a matter of finding the right GM style in gameplay to suit them. I did find it too and we absolutely have a ball playing, a lot of the trick was learning to go with it. Listen to your players in their actions as well as words as to what they want to get out of their characters.

Okay this might be a jagged pill but I'm just going to cut in with what I think is going on.

[KageRyu]