Faily Q&A

[Faily]

Kon!

Questions go here. Answers might also go here. Oohohohohoho

[Hatoful GM]

Helloooooooooooo Sempai!

Obviously, I don't have too many questions for you. We talked a bunch, after all! Nevertheless...

Did you have a favorite NPC to play?
What was the favorite curveball the players threw you?

[Byron Mik]

Any stories you wanted to explore that were not featured or dropped or the players just failed to follow upon?

[Zizzy Roosh]

Favourite things the players came up with that you weren't expecting?

I didn't get to interact with Jaric but he seemed fun. Which NPC did you like playing the most?

[Silas Myles Pearson]

A couple of my questions were already asked! Still I'll say thanks for the games it was a lot of fun!

I suppose I should ask if more was planned with Forushyyk. I know we kinda pushed that back a bit further then intended. Also did you ever consider picking lightsaber colors for us? For some reason I thought that was how it was going to go. >.>

[Faily]

Helloooooooooooo Sempai!

Obviously, I don't have too many questions for you. We talked a bunch, after all! Nevertheless...

Did you have a favorite NPC to play?
What was the favorite curveball the players threw you?

Oh man, it's hard to choose favorite NPC.

Outside of the main ones, I liked the hangar-droid on Coruscant (who gave me a desire to play a Droid character someday), as well as playing the Joiner on Auratera that spoke with Byron - mostly because it was a very fun challenge to speak as someone who was thinking of concepts in regards to a hive-mind.

Oh, and Destrus. Can't forget that one.

My favorite curveball is players providing me with hooks and plot-ideas based on their own actions and ideas. Which was sometimes me scrambling to figure out what things actually were!

[Faily]

Any stories you wanted to explore that were not featured or dropped or the players just failed to follow upon?

Nope! You guys actually went and explored a lot more than I had initially planned and expected, so I was having a lot of fun keeping pace with you guys.

I wanted the daily news on Coruscant and Auratera to provide life to the setting. To give an impression of what is going on in the galaxy even when the PCs aren't involved and something for the PCs to talk about ("hey did you see the news"). Jedi Cop manifesting and going all in for the missing people on Auratera led to a lot of brainstorming and fun improv from both me and Hatoful!

So I did feel like you guys explored everything that I had planned... plus extra!

EDIT: I guess the Are You Afraid of the Dark-event and some parts of Destrus were not explored fully, but that's alright! The event could've given the accepting PCs some power with the Dark side at the cost of lots of Conflict. Eir would've recieved a lot more than that had she accepted the "gift" from Destrus.

[Faily]

Favourite things the players came up with that you weren't expecting?

I didn't get to interact with Jaric but he seemed fun. Which NPC did you like playing the most?

Exploring on Ilum, Jedi Cop on Auratera, the snowball fight on Ilum, the creativity of players in how to solve a case or mystery. It was a bit of a different approach of Events, and while it didn't work in all instances which was me not having adapted enough after seeing the characters in action, I did enjoy the investigations on Auratera for the missing people as well as the Missing Youngling-adventure on Coruscant because I felt it provided a lot of open room to how players wanted to try and solve things rather than me saying "now roll Streetwise, then roll Deception, then Brawl, and now he's free. yay!".

I did like Jaric too! Actually a lot more than I thought I would. xD I thought Murah was easily going to be my favorite going on, but I think she ended up being my least favorite main NPC over the course of the game (I didn't dislike her, but I just ended up liking Jaric and Farissa more).

[Faily]

A couple of my questions were already asked! Still I'll say thanks for the games it was a lot of fun!

I suppose I should ask if more was planned with Forushyyk. I know we kinda pushed that back a bit further then intended. Also did you ever consider picking lightsaber colors for us? For some reason I thought that was how it was going to go. >.>

I'm glad you had fun, since I know Force User was a bit out of your comfort zone!

I didn't plan that much for them actually, and I did improv some of the stuff there since I figured it would be neat for Silas to get his chance to shine with the costume-stuff. Mostly because I didn't feel that I could provide Silas with a story-hook based on his background, so he got a story-hook based on his hobbies. xD FrouShyyuk and Silas' design will get an appearance in the write-up of the timeline!

As for picking colors... I didn't want to do that, to be honest since I felt that people deserved to get the bitchin' lightsaber they wanted. Be it purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, white, etc. We did select for Mir as we were requested by the player to do so though.

[Faily]

Also want to say that this was my first time in forever being the lead GM on a game (I think only a couple of you here remember Winter Court: Kyuden Asako years and years ago), and my first time GMing Star Wars properly. Overall, I enjoyed GMing the system since I felt it was easy for me to adapt and go with the flow, especially with such great players.

And I know I could've done some things better, and I will certainly try to improve on that as well as my knowledge of the system for the future. I had a lot of fun GMing for a smaller group of players. While a smaller playerbase does come with some issues, I also don't think I'm quite ready to handle a big group again soon.

[Byron Mik]

I tip my hat to thee and I am glad with what you did with the setting of Coruscant and in general

[Hatoful GM]

You know, I probably knew this at some point, but I've totally forgotten.

Where did the idea for Jedi Academy come from? Why young Jedi?

[Eir]

Eir would've recieved a lot more than that had she accepted the "gift" from Destrus.

I had really hoped to delve much deeper in Destrus, Sembylus, and the "gift" this game. Going to the Dark Side was never on the cards for Eir, though.

[O'vala Aeser]

Overall, I enjoyed the game, but I think I was less interested than I had expected going into it. That's not a bad thing, it just means that i didn't feel the urge to post as much. I think it lied in the following:

1. Low XP Start
2. The Game Concept
3. Lack of Drive

Well, for the first two, I think those were very intentional on your part and there's nothing wrong with that. Personally, I don't very much like starting characters in any system. I feel like they don't have enough mechanical depth to them. As for the concept, I didn't actually feel much drive to trying to become a Jedi. I found some ways to make it interesting, but ultimately, I didn't necessarily want to play a character going through the Trials. I think you guys did very well with it and I think others got more out of that than I did.

For the final point, I admittedly felt lost sometimes on what I could/should be doing. I admit I could have reached out a bit more about that. I didn't feel too involved with any plots but I know I didn't make large efforts on my own part. Maybe something for us to talk about for another game!

Thanks for running it. Seems like you had a great time with it. I suppose my request is that if/when you do run another game, if it's not a sequel to this, to broaden the potential characters (don't feel like being all Jedi or something again!) and give us more XP to work with.

As a final add-on: like I asked Hatoful, were there any NPCs that you felt like got underutilized?

[Faily]

I tip my hat to thee and I am glad with what you did with the setting of Coruscant and in general

Awww thanks! <3

And thank you again for letting us piggyback on your setting.

[Faily]

You know, I probably knew this at some point, but I've totally forgotten.

Where did the idea for Jedi Academy come from? Why young Jedi?

When I was brainstorming for ideas for a small game to run, I kept returning to Star Wars. Korriban was perhaps one of the games I enjoyed the most in the last couple of years and I felt it was a little sad that there wasn't a "starting game" for the Republic in Dapper Wars.

So I wanted to revisit that idea but for Jedi and see how things would be done differently there. And well, it was a concept I thought could be fun.

Oh and you had some pretty great ideas early on about the trials that made me embrace the concept even more.

That the SWTOR universe have so much to play around with is also a great inspiration.

[Faily]

Eir would've recieved a lot more than that had she accepted the "gift" from Destrus.

I had really hoped to delve much deeper in Destrus, Sembylus, and the "gift" this game. Going to the Dark Side was never on the cards for Eir, though.

Alas.

Still, there must always be at least the offer of a deal with the devil somewhere.

[Faily]

Overall, I enjoyed the game, but I think I was less interested than I had expected going into it. That's not a bad thing, it just means that i didn't feel the urge to post as much. I think it lied in the following:

1. Low XP Start
2. The Game Concept
3. Lack of Drive

Well, for the first two, I think those were very intentional on your part and there's nothing wrong with that. Personally, I don't very much like starting characters in any system. I feel like they don't have enough mechanical depth to them. As for the concept, I didn't actually feel much drive to trying to become a Jedi. I found some ways to make it interesting, but ultimately, I didn't necessarily want to play a character going through the Trials. I think you guys did very well with it and I think others got more out of that than I did.

For the final point, I admittedly felt lost sometimes on what I could/should be doing. I admit I could have reached out a bit more about that. I didn't feel too involved with any plots but I know I didn't make large efforts on my own part. Maybe something for us to talk about for another game!

Thanks for running it. Seems like you had a great time with it. I suppose my request is that if/when you do run another game, if it's not a sequel to this, to broaden the potential characters (don't feel like being all Jedi or something again!) and give us more XP to work with.

As a final add-on: like I asked Hatoful, were there any NPCs that you felt like got underutilized?

Thanks for the feedback!

Yeah I can totally relate to the starting characters blues too. And it's something that I've grown tired of for L5R myself. For this game I wanted to take it easy since it was my first real GM role for the system and I wanted to have a starting-story for folks.

I have ideas for at least one future game and I will want to roll with higher XP levels then now that I feel more confident in the system and how things flow.

And yes, that will be a different theme to open up for other types of stories and characters.

On the subject of things to do, I apologize for not offering enough or stronger incentives. I tried things a bit differently for this game, and I will certainly take the good and bad results with me in the future to improve.

[Esla Tor]

I feel that everyone has pretty much asked the questions on my mind. However, I still wish to thank you for GMing and making this game possible with your hard work. Also, thank you for having me!

Also, I think Winter Court: Kyuden Asako was a decade ago. It must have been. O_o

If I may, I kind of want to hop on the points of criticism with different opinions.

I personally don't feel the low XP start was an issue but I typically make the best of it when it comes to starting XP and have absolutely no clue with what to do with future XP. It feels about right, when it comes to starting out as young Jedi to be. Actually, I was expecting even lower XP starts and it seemed most of us had powers right out of the gate. I kind of built Esla with stunted capabilities to emulate that (that and the other 50% is my lack of knowledge of the system, sad as it's my 3rd Star Wars game). Seeing the abundance of fours and probably realization that you couldn't up your stats with XP probably should have made me reconsider that.

The game concept, yeah, it was something I had difficulties getting into but it slowly grew on me as I played further. However, I still feel like I'm riding in the backseat when it comes to these Star Wars games on motivation and that's entirely on me, probably on par with my usual style anyway. I wasn't active and I understand that motivation is often a pull-to-push dynamic. With the low player count, I think only the vergence took advantage and personalized it to the character. It was a good experience and I liked it a lot, which makes me think that I should have probably pulled more for the story.

[Zizzy Roosh]

I liked the low xp levels, I thought it worked well. Yes it'll be nice to play a higher xp game sometime, but if been wanting to do a Jedi newbie game for a while so thanks again!

After a lot of back and forth I decided to go with a 3 3's and 3 2's build. I also didn't take any of the skill boost powers. Zizzy ended up doing better than I expected, but I think I'd still want to pick up a 4 in something sooner rather than later.

Anyway, great game and I look forward to the next one, whatever theme you decide to go for. I also really liked the lower number of players. It worked well in Korriban and it worked well here