Large Role Playing Groups

Our group has now decided to make it so the PC's roll the green dice every single time there is a check. I, the GM, now roll the purple and reds every single time. Everyone gets to see what the PC's roll, but don't see what the GM rolls.

It was amazing because now things can happen and they don't know the answer. For example they were searching for something and rolled 5 successes and one advantage. I rolled 4 threat and 4 disadvantage. It was a crazy roll. So they were successful in seeing something on the ground and I told them that. So they thought they had been successful. When they got to the ground though I let them know that what they saw was just a rock. Which caused them to lose time. That was the disadvantage.

Adds a whole new element to the game. They don't know immediately if the NPC's are trustable.

If you are looking for a way to get your group in to a high pressured situation and maybe ruin a couple friendships, then look no further!

This past week we decided to change up the pace and meet up on a saturday, instead of wednesday nights, and have a longer session. The campaign had been going really well and they all wanted to play for a longer session. So I took the week and created a great story. If you would like to try this story, I would recommend it. But beware, for if you do it wrong it can "blow up". You'll get that in a second.

Exposition

In this session we had nine. Three of our main players couldn't come and a new player wanted to join in. The players all started out at there home base which is located on Dantooine (Pre-Dantooine destruction by the empire). One of the residence of their base was having troubles sleeping because they were hearing voices coming from the desert. The heroes decided to go check it out, but it was dark.

They left in their ships and started to scout. As they were scouting and doing checks they saw someone and started to follow them. The person ran into a tunnel and the heroes decided to chase after them. Our Aatrox (Clawdite) decided to run after the person and ran into the tunnel, followed by our Hort (Deshade) and a Ry (Cathar). As they were running, Poe (wookie), Artanus, and Treyk decided to go above and see if they could scout for an exit to the tunnel.

Aatrox after a quick chase caught up to what ended up being a teenage aqualish. They brought the aqualish back and put it in one of the cells of their firespray that they had. After interrogating him for a while they couldn't get anything out. The only thing he said was that he needed to leave the planet.

Meanwhile Poe and all them had gotten lost. I used two destiny points and knocked them all out. They were quite frustrated with that decision, but they went with it. Ry and Aatrox went off and looked for the lost members of there crew, when they started to hear the weird noise. Ry ended up getting caught by this tribe of twilek people and Aatrox ran back to the ship.

The Plot

The heroes went to the Twilek camp to get there friends back when they saw that Poe and Ry were binded together with some goo and so were Treyk and Artanus. They demanded their friends back, when the leader of the Twilek, a women, came out and said they WANTED to give them their friends back. Confused, they asked why. She explained that the goo was a bomb that would blow up in 2 days (Which was actually 2 hours real time. This happened at 8:45 pm and I told the players that if they did not achieve the goal in the 2 hours that the bombs would blow up and the players would die). She then went on to explain that she needed a tooth from the planet Lorrd. That that planet had a beast on it that flew and was called the Lord of Lorrd.

Hort, our massive deshade, tried to intimidate her to take it off. She then turned to him and said, "you may kill me, for this is for my God's and my life is worthiless." Uh oh, I could see in the players faces the anger with these people. This was serious and everyone in the group was now on their A-game.

They decided to talk it out and Rax really wanted to help the aqualish kid. For his parents were in the same dire situation and he needed to get to another planet to get a powder. Rax wanted to help him out. So Rax, Hort and Bortul (A very old Farghul) decided to help the poor boy. The other 6 would go and get the tooth.

The only thing was that both planets were uncharted and they needed to go to planets nearby first to get information. Rax's team had to be quick because an hour was already up cause they had been holding the kid capture for the hour. Luckily they ran around very quickly and kept on doing quick rolls. In the last 15 minutes they found in the deserts of this planet, underneath mounds of sand that they were digging into, a temple. In that temple they started to look around when the aqualish teenager fell into white quick sand. This was the dirt they needed. In a very close call they got the teenager out, got the powder and got back to save the family.

The other group had troubles deciding what to do and were a lot slower. The planet Lorrd had lots of hazards and they had to prepare, but couldn't bring everybody because they didn't have the environmental gear to help everyone survive. They looked for a long time and finally found the bird and with the help of a destiny point shot the tooth out of its mouth. They ran away and 2 characters got crits on them. They only had 5 minutes to get back. Rax had met up with them at the planet and was the pilot(because he is the fasted). He rolled to make the engine go faster and see if they could make it on time. It was really... really close. The rolls showed that they failed.

The Finale

They got back to the camp and I let one more roll go. Did they get there on time. It was 10:45 pm on our watches. We rolled 3 green and 3 purple. Whichever had more success or threat would decide if the won. The threats won out and the bombs exploded. Poe, Artanus, Treyk and Ry all were blown up and died. It was emotional and hard. The players that played poe and Artanus were so pissed they left.

The other players were so emotional that they killed everyone in that tribe. It was crazy, but the emotion in the players is crazy. Little do the players know that this character development will help them so much in the future encounters.

After it being very difficult for the players, two days later I got texts from almost all of them. Even the ones who died(Except for one) saying that they couldn't wait for the next one.

Vengeance is to be had.

Anybody that knows me wouldn't look at me and think, "That guy is into Role Playing Games". It's no offense to the guys who do... cause I honestly love RPGs. I am just a very sportsy guy. I play tons of basketball and love to date. I wear flat brim hats and sold alarms for 2 years door to door. Not a shy person, but nerdiness will conquer all.

My friends and I always had an itch we couldn't scratch when it came to games. Video games were fun, but they were a little to organized and didn't give us enough freedom. We would always talk about video games we planned on making that would put Grand Theft Auto to shame.

We finally came to the conclusion one night that we should start a role playing game. We went to the nearby game store and upon entering felt immediately uncomfortable. We did not fit in(or so we thought). We looked a couple games and books and asked the employee there what he recommended. He said that we should do pathfinder.

After that we mulled it over for a good couple months, but could never muster up the courage to just start playing. That was until one summer when I was out selling. We stumbled upon the Star Wars:Edge of the Empire beginners game and knew that that was what we wanted to play.

It was exactly what we wanted. Star Wars is an ACCEPTABLE nerdy in our standards. Pathfinder is pretty much dungeons and dragons, but we just felt more... comfortable if it was called star wars. Now you are probably judging me and that is totally acceptable. I have now repented of that and will actually soon be starting a pathfinder group also.

The great part of star wars though were that my friends from all over had also wanted to try something like this, but had never done it on the account of that they would've been to embarrassed like me. They felt the same way with star wars though and loved the idea. The group just kept growing to the point where we aren't sure if want to allow more people, but we don't want to deny them the opportunity. The group is now up to about 12 regulars in our party. We don't want to split up though, cause frankly we just have to much fun all together.

When we first started our campaign we had 4 players and me GMing. We started out with one person on Tatooine (because mind you we were playing Star Wars: Edge of the Empire) and throughout the story we would add in people one by one. As encounters and sessions went by we gradually had more friends want to join in. Every time that someone wanted to join in we would cleverly think of a way that they stumbled into our story.

After several weeks we had a party of 11 over at my house and it was crazy. My head was spinning because I would think of a whole plot line and it wouldn't go as planned because all that they wanted to do was go on and do other things. I will go on in another article about how to control the group, but with time we found out the splitting the team up into 2-4 groups was the best option.

After a break we all decided we wanted to restart our campaign now that we were all more veteran at playing. This time I was more prepared even though our starting size was 10 people. So this is how we started and it is recommended to go about doing it like this if you want it to go smoothly with so many people.

First I started out with 4 characters and I chose them because they had rolled (We roll a 20 sided dice and if anyone in the group roles the same number that means that they were friends before the campaign started and if so can tie their backstories together) that they would all be together. It was quite lucky and served the story very well. They started on Tatooine helping one of the characters, Artanus, best friend with this deadly sickness he needed help to cure. They went off on their adventure.

The other 6 all started in prison together. All chained to the wall in the same prison. They had all been arrested at different times (and I gave them the liberty of deciding how they got into the jail) and they now had to figure out how to escape the jail. They all realized after doing some checks that they were on the distant planet of Ukio.

Group one ended up finding some engineers that were on Tatooine mining a cave for a Uranium type mineral and the PC's helped out and in return the engineers helped them get the herb that they needed. After helping out(and rolling amazing on everything) the engineers offered the PC's a chance to leave the planet and help them out. One of the motivations of the characters, Treyk, is to keep in constant movement and to explore planets. So he was all in and the others followed suit. The engineers were off to a rebel settlement... on UKIO!

After the prisoners had escaped they wondered for a while, but found that encampment and found refuge their and encountered the other party. They all started talking... that was until storm troopers dropped in and started lighting up that place. The group was going to fight, until Darth Vader walked in. They found an escape hatch in the ground in one of the buildings and was gone.

There is a lot more, but separating the groups in the end is the best way to go. I would council anyone that is trying to do a big group to keep people on their toes. Keep it difficult and make sure they are always uncomfortable until the encounter is over.

A big question for many groups is how to do the fight and layout. Should you use the tokens given in the beginner games or miniatures and maps? Or should you just imagine everything.

We decided to do a mix of both. We will draw maps of everywhere that we go, but when it comes to fighting we leave it more to the imagination. We do put miniatures, but they are barely used. We are all old RISK pros and have since like the layout almost like that. That we can come up with what we want and just have a reference point

This was a monster that we avoided for almost a year of playing.

The struggle of how to go about one person flying a plane and the other not really doing anything did not sound very fun for many of the players and I had to figure out how to go about this... Then the Age of Rebellion came out.

Why this was so important was I had never thought about the ranking system. Having certain people flying around and other going around infiltrating and battling.

Our first time trying it was a little bit scary, because I didn't know how it would go. One of the players was thouroughly excited... well because he was our pilot. Half the team was infiltrating the base, while the other half got into a pair of busted up X-Wings and their own crew ship (the Arch Angel, which they named their Firespray). The X-wings were about halfway down on their health and I was certain that I would kill at least one PC, if not all of them. It was going to be crazy. The NPC's had just as many ships. It was a matched battle, except their ships had full health.

After some great planning and some AMAZING rolls the PC's were feeling on top of the world. One had out flown the one chasing him as the NPC crashed into a nearby mountain and the NPC's just couldn't hit ANYTHING. It was fun to see the players go from sweating bullets to total voices of rejoice. They loved it. Now they all look for opportunities to fly.

Reading over how to do battles made me feel a lot better. It is a lot like normal fighting, just you can only hit many times on a certain side of the ship. That makes it a lot more strategic and creates a whole new dynamic which the players really enjoyed.

Like in all posts though, make sure the players are all separated. It is very encouraged. I don't like to make players sit around... unless they are in a Twilek jail... then I make them sit around for about 4 hours. It happened once, but made for one of the best encounters ever. I will go about that on another post.

You know how every group as that super annoying character. Who whenever something good is going on they always find a way to screw it up? For some it's a jar jar binks character. For others (Which includes my group) you have a guy with a super huge mouth and an even larger ego.

One time he got drunk in a bar while the other players were out doing a job. The job was going so freaking successful. It was awesome, but he couldn't be a part of it, why you may ask? Because he got in trouble with the local government ranting his mouth off. He then went off and killed the local ambassador for no reason. I bet you can imagine how the group felt about this character while the rest of them were being super productive. Super annoyed.

Suddenly into the cantina walked the police, looking for the man who killed the ambassador. This particular guys name was Rax, and if you watched the video above. The man in the cowboy hat is Rax Thalur. Well, pretty much. That's from the Old Republic, but it is exactly how this player wanted him to be. Rax was super drunk and when the officers asked if he did it he tried a deception check. Unfortunately he failed and they could tell that he was the guy.

The officers then said they were going to arrest him and pulled their blaster pistols out. Pissed off with the outcome, Rax decided to stand up on his chair and said "Oh ya! let me show you my blaster pistol!" He then unzipped his pants and showed them his "blaster pistol". He was then knocked out and woke up in jail.

We learned from this and several other times how fun the game can become through random ideas and playing to your characters true self. Motivations are so important and should be followed through. He could've done the normal, but we all now love the character.