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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jodo Kast" data-source="post: 207972" data-attributes="member: 4810">Thanks for the kind words, DM Cthulu and Horatio.  Actually, the Prelude featuring Baydo, Tevy and Jodo Kast was character lead-in.  "Head Trip" chronicles the first actual adventure session, introducing the PC Jirair Gann.  I tried a new approach with this that other GMs out there might find interesting.  Part of the beauty of Star Wars: Episode IV is that each of the characters had personalities and backstories that were established before they all came together.  For example, we know that Han Solo and his Millenium Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs and Obi-Wan Kenobi fought in the Clone Wars.  These details made the characters, and the world around them, real and vibrant.  Only Luke Skywalker was relatively inexperienced.  But in the Star Wars RPG, it is implied that the game begins with a party of 1st level characters, all of whom are less experienced than Luke (he was a Fringer 2 at the beginning of Episode IV)!  The players have to work to establish their characters and discover their personalities, while also learning how to act as a team with the other players.  I didn't like this model for Star Wars.  So here is what I decided to do about it.I'm actually gaming through the first few levels with each of the players individually.  To move things along to the point where the whole party comes together, I'm not gaming die roll by die roll.  Rather, I'm using game mechanics for some of the highlights, but I'm mostly just shooting the breeze with the individual players about their background.  It's sort of an interactive storytelling experience where we feed off of each other.  It has worked well so far.  During Head Trip, Jirair Gann is an inexperienced, naive fringer who has never been off Malabar.  By the time he meets the other characters, he will be a confident free trader, skilled in piloting space transports and even better at jury rigging repairs in a pinch.  The player and I have been talking/gaming through the backstory that leads to this point and it has been a BLAST!One real advantage of this method is that by the time all of us sit down around the game table, my campaign will already be full of NPC personalities such as Choti the Squid, Jodo Kast, Dev Novo, Bobbo, Biqua, and Outer Rim Oreworks ... and those are just the characters from Jirair's background!  Cthuluftaghn (DM of a GREAT Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil campaign in which I play the self-righteous, evil-smiting fighter/cleric Gann Tolar ... check out his Story Hour) is one of my players.  We have not yet created his character, but I suspect it will be a ton of fun.  All of the characters are on a web, being drawn inevitably to the center where they will meet in the first full game session.  By then, they will have their personas down and have no trouble playing their respective roles. Okay, I've rambled on, and this really isn't Story Hour type material.  I'll let you folks know how this method works out, although you should be able to gauge its success based on future installments of this Story Hour.</blockquote>

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