[Star Wars D6] 10 months and Still Going Strong

[Eric J.]

A small while ago I recapped my campaign which I now call Sins of the Father and I figured that I'd post it here on the thread since it took me a while to write and I figured that I could get some good perspective here.

Then, I realised that I had posted about the initial session here on The Forge so I went topic searching and discovered that this campaign has been going for almost exactly 10 months!

Thread here:
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=8070&highlight=

Many Forge Vetrans will recal all of your adventures teaching me, a punk adolescant lucky enough to stumble upon these forums so long ago (for me).  I can finally see how far I've come.  In the thread it said that I needed more focus and it warned me that it would fizzle out.  Well, I'd like to recap the last 10 months so here it goes:

Episode I- A Prelude at an Academy

On the planet Siphmoth Aran Mishto worked to solve the mystery of Trilos and Greson with the help of Master Keldor and Etamin. Trilos almost killed Alicia out of a jealous rage for not caring for him as he did her. However, Aran lost, and Trilos was supposed to be set free. However, he was discovered to have done it using farsight by Master Antene. Afterwards, they went to an abandoned base in a mountain across Siphmoth's endless plains. There they found a Vorshneir as well as an R3 Droid, a Sith Holocron and a broken lightsaber. Thereafter Jake Kenso and Aran faught and defeated a Sith Spirit after Aran's life. It ended with a lightsaber tournament that Aran won. He was bestowed the rank of Jedi apprentice. Master Keldor gave him an unnamed starship and they left to see the Galaxy.

Sessions: Probably 14

Episode II- The Black Conspiracy

Well they finally got to Corescant, the assasin, I knew they would taunt. Aran and Master Keldor visited an unspectacular artifact and then defeated another assassin. This is also where they met up with Julian. Aran managed to save him from 3 men with ion blasters. They got a message, inviting Aran to another lightsaber tournament. There, Aran got a chance to meet up with some more Jedi apprentices (Gon, Tyr, and Helen). After defeating Gon in the first round, he was summoned by Evander, leader of the Jedi order. Sent to the headquarters of Bahara industries; Aran, Keldor, and Julian, discovered a vacant base that had been shipping supplies to a planet in the Exploration Rim called Vetas. They meet up with two cloaked figures in a biodome atop the base in the asteroids and Aran challenges him to a riddle contest. Aran won thanks to Master Keldor's help and the strange Jedi commited suicide. The other cloaked figure slaped Aran before he could react, and revealed the cold green-eyed face of a Sith Teenaged Girl that asked to go along with them.

Sessions: About 8.

Episode III- An Enemy Revealed

This brings us to our current chapter. The return trip to Aalderan was brief and Aran and Keldor learned a bit about Eos. She had been a Jedi that left for an entire year to learn about the Sith. And you thought that being held in an Iraqi camp was bad. They get back and we find that Eos's master is none other than Erana the headmaster of the Aalderan academy. Evander wastes little time sending them on another mission, this time to investigate Vetas, the colony that they had found out earlier. Aran hops aboard his ship again called the White Phoenix, with Master Keldor, and Eos. When they get there, they find that the entire base is filled with powerful Dark Jedi. Aran and Eos are quickly captured by Sith Darth Janus and put into Jediproof cells after Aran uses piebot to get some invaluable data. At the same time, a new character, Anastasius is gathering whoever he can on Aalderan to rescue Eos.

They sneak in, undetected, and infultrate the valley complex. Anastasius reveals that he isn't just a force prodigy, but also a dashing charismatic protecter. Anyway, Jake Kenso and Julian accompany him. Though persued by numerous Sith, the group escapes and travels back to Aalderan. However, they are not blessed by Master Keldor's presence. On the way the escapees learn a little bit about eachother. When they reach the academy, they start to wonder whether the Jedi Council can be trusted or not and Aran has to make a choice on who to trust the data to. Eventually Anastasius wins out. However, Erana gives them a message telling them coordinates to meet with Darth Janus who wants to negociate with them.

The young Jedi convinces Anastasius, Eos, and Julian to accompany him and they meet up with a stowaway durring the trip who escaped from the academy. Aran and his friends show up, and Aran charges at him, unwilling to negociate. Imbued with the power of the force he makes 3 strikes on the Sith who refuses to attack while Anastasius slips away. Darth Janus eventualy gets the best of Aran but Keldor shows up in the White phoenix just in time underneth the hourglass shaped platform. Eos, Evan the stoway, and Aran quickly come aboard and they discourse with Master Keldor who was boarded by Darth Futte. Anyway, they make up and decide to go off to the Republic battle at Vetas while Anastasius and Julian ventured to the Ossus library. Keldor, revealing more about his past stopped on Correlia to get his fighter "The Unlucky hand." The battle with the faction apparently allied with the Sith didn't go well and Keldor with his apprentice were captured. Another escape with more information proved eventful and they escaped into the sea of stars.

On Ossus, things weren't so pretty. Anastasius met up with is mentor Agekelos and he went with him to meet his fate. However, Julian and his friend got away and ventured into the Great Library on Ossus. Inside was a pool of blood and a single Jedi looking over his fallen comrades bodies. Julian, with much luck and help from Anastasius, was able to defeat Destas and they gathered the information they needed.  This lead to the discovery that Julian is actually an android. Evidently, there were 6, not 4 founders of the Jedi order. Seeing this inspired Anastasius to see what the truth really was, just as Eos had done, and he ventured into unexplored regions of the galaxy, leaving Julian on a world of technology called Bess. After a few weeks of transportation, a great shockwave was felt throughout the galaxy. As Keldor had feared, had suspected, Evander betrayed the order and Ossus was put under strict quaranteen.

Julian found an old friend called Da Vinci who restored some of his memories, which had somehow been disabled by a heavy blast from an Ion Gun. However, this left Julian with little more knowlege about his origins. Soon the crew left Dockingbay 16 to meet up with old friends on Aalderan and they were soon joined by Eos and Evan. Once reunited, and a night, they met up with Darth Janus again. He taught them about the beautiful nameless maiden of Aalderan's past as well as two of the lost founders, removed from the Jedi history. He also offered to aid them in their search for Anastasius, presenting an odd connection between Darth Janus and him. Aran decided that he had to take his own journey to Ossus and, with his companions, he managed to evade a guardian fighter and landed down upon moonlit night. Inside the great library were 3 Jedi Masters as well as the information they seeked. Deep within, they found the information on Azrael as well as his prophecy. A master of Fate, he is waiting to be reborn, waiting for the Renaissance. They managed to escape the libary and are now on their way back to the stars.

Sessions: About 13 or something.

Total Sessions: About 35 or so.

Here are some specifics for the people who actually read through all of that. :)  I excluded some of my brothers characters from that rundown since he rarly played an important part in the plot, itself.  He may have been important or critical in helping something to happen, but he's gone in and out with so many characters, I'm only keeping track of 'Evan'.

I've instituted my most complete combat system to date, my priority system.  I might post something about that in a seperate thread if I feel so inclined.  I've also done a rebuff of the power system and a little bit of the skill system.  I've found that my mods make the game more fun to play since it encourages protagonisation through individual character statistics and tactics.

I'd like this thread to talk about my successes and what things have allowed those to happen.  Here is a short list:

Inertia- Once a campaign gets going, players become more attached to their characters, making it more likley to continue.
Forshadowing- Makes the plot reasonable and interesting for the players to participate with it.
Player control- I've let my players develop their characters in different meaningful ways, though I've had kindof an iron fist on what goes in the end and what doesn't.
Pacing- Introducing plot into each session makes it a lot easier over the long haul.
Characters- I have a good 10 or 20 organic characters each with a distincly unique personality.

Here are some problems:
GM consistancy- Sometimes I'll change minor things like the layout or style of the Ossus Library or the time to travel between planets.
Complexity- Sometimes, I think that I can't keep track of all the plot events.  And I have a pretty good memory, methinks.
Player secracy- No matter how many times I tell them they won't reveal things about their characters, sometimes.  Example: For the entire length of the campaign, Jake Kenso has told the other characters (and made no attempt to tell the other players) that his name is Mr. Osnek.  Julian was also very ruluctant to reveal the fact that his character is an android.  I explained to them that keeping secrets between characters is good, but on some level you can't keep secrets from other players and my replies are usually something like: We aren't that good!
Reactivist GM/Players- Sometimes, I get tired of driving the plot and get afraid of making things too contrived and it takes the players a good 5 or 10 minutes to do anything.
Underreaction to important plot events- Sometimes I want more reaction to important plot events, mostly stuff that deals with the Sith.  Taking down bad guys may be an everyday thing for roleplayers but the implied consequences of the recent are supposed to be fear inspiring at best, and troublesome at worst.

All in all I give it 8 and a  half stars, mostly because of having to take certain players in and out of the game due to real life concerns... (like strict parents and potential homocide cases)

So... what's your part you may ask?  I don't know.  I'd love feedback of any kind really.  I have some really big story things coming up.  Your experiences with your first really good campaign would be appreciated.  Any questions you have for me, the GM, whatever!

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

[JamesDJIII]

Eric, I have to look at this first and foremost:

Underreaction to important plot events- Sometimes I want more reaction to important plot events, mostly stuff that deals with the Sith. Taking down bad guys may be an everyday thing for roleplayers but the implied consequences of the recent are supposed to be fear inspiring at best, and troublesome at worst.

The hardest lesson I have ever learned as a GM is that My Precious Plot Developments mean jack-squat. I've had games where, just as you have said, stuff has happened and the players either ignored them or just plain were not impressed. Their reactions were luke-warm towards events that I thought would be earth shattering in importance.

The problem was this: the events were all important to me, either as a part of my Precious Plot, or as I (if I were a player) would find fascinating and important. They had nothing to do with what the players cared about at all. Some other symptoms of this issue: players becoming bored and confused as the game unfolds, a tendendency on my part to railroad outcomes, and in particular a growing disatisfaction with GMing and gmaing in general.

You may not have this problem, but I suspect that if players are not reacting to events that should be important, it's likely that the events are not.  

I suppose a solution would be to generate events that are important to the players. Asking them is one way to find out what is important, and many games have interesting mechanics to support this discovery process. Kickers come to mind from Sorcerer, or Spiritual Attributes from The Riddle of Steel.

Potential thread split topic: anyone know of great ways to do this in other systems that do not explicitly address this issue?

Eric, hope that helped and was on target.

[Eric J.]

Thank you.  It really isn't a serious problem, just something that irritates me from time to time.  I suspect you're right, and I usually make plot events that are geared towards the players immidiatley, but every once in a while I have a small problem with it.  Here are the plot events that have caused the most interest and the ones that haven't that I always thought should have.

The ones that did:

The Holocron with Aran's image in it that dates back over a century ago.

Darth Janus's invitations.

When Keldor went missing.

Some ones that didn't as much:

Their first encounters with the Sith.

Cryptic Spirits.

Maybe the founder mystery.

Eh... it's not a big problem, I guess.

I should probably talk the meta-game problems involved as well.  When I started up the game, it was just something to do on Saturday evenings.  Since then I've had 3 friends trying to get into the campaign whose schedules have been hecktic and religous matters have made it all but impossible.  And beyond that, I've had a friend whose life and activites lately have made it difficult to play.

Of the three the problems have been:

Supereligious overcontroling parents who hate me and my family (they made it impossible for anyone save a few select phonenumbers to call them)
Overcontrolling parents (from my POV) who limit the time and occasion of one of my friend's activites.
The third couldn't do to the first problems anyway, and grade problems.

To you guys it all must seem juvenile and crap.  Sometimes, it does to me too, but them's the breaks.  Now that it's summer, it's a little better (A LITTLE) but person B with the overcontrolling parents still has little time to do anything, and we have to improvise our schedules to work around it.

My point is that it puts a lot of stress on me (having to weigh GMing concerns, plot conerns as well as social concerns, i.e. person A doen't like person B and person C isn't liked by person A but still deserves my time etc.)  I'm just riding the wave, hoping that my evolution as a GM can keep up with everything.

Thanks Forge.  This is probably my most enjoyable RPG experience yet.

May the wind be always at your back,
-Pyron

[JamesDJIII]

Don't underestimate the importance of the social aspects of the people you are gaming with. If you couldn't be friends with them, then don't game with them.

As far as parents who hate you, well, heck. It's not fun I know (been there before, a looooong time ago). But, eventually you will no longer be at any's mercy. Game with who you can, and who you like to game with.

Don't exchange numbers for quality.

[JamesDJIII]

Here are the plot events that have caused the most interest and the ones that haven't that I always thought should have.

The ones that did:

The Holocron with Aran's image in it that dates back over a century ago.

Darth Janus's invitations.

When Keldor went missing.

Do you know what specifics are common to these events? How could you tell the players were interested? Did they explicitly state this, or did they merely turn the energy up? Did they make decisions in the game to reinforce this perception? (I'm curious...)