You can find a PDF of the most recent version HERE along with a template character sheet for Google Sheets/Excel and the “Planets of Kord Pria Sector,” a gazetteer of planets in which my home game is set. Go wild.
I probably should’ve released this a while ago but just didn’t bother to. My home game is in the midst of an unplanned hiatus and so the time I’d spend prepping is instead spent writing this blog post.
Turns out scheduling around adult lives for half a dozen people is a real nightmare. AKA, a tale as old as time.
A big contributor (and rather unlikely one at that) for why we are stuck where we are in the game is what the table has taken to calling “Jake’s Sidequest.” One of the PCs, J4-K3 (an astromech gunslinger droid), has a very well-written backstory which so very helpfully has given me plenty of plot hooks to work with. As unlikely as that normally would be, even more unlikely is the interest everyone else has expressed in chasing down his very backstory-specific leads.
This has become something of a double-edged sword: I have a lot of organic engagement for a mini plot in what is nominally a sandbox game, at the expense of playing far less frequently. You see, J4-K3/Jake’s player has a pretty turbulent work schedule and has been unable to play in the last few weeks. The rest of the players want to play the game, but they want to continue “Jake’s sidequest” and they don’t want to do it without him.
That isn’t his fault — it’s mine.
Because of my players’ enthusiasm with “Jake’s sidequest” I have prepped the next step and hadn’t prepped much else. Each time we have sat down to play (usually missing 1-3 people, thanks to differing schedules) I have been ready to run the next leg of the side quest and not really much else. We did one “side mission” instead of the regularly scheduled programming, but the players’ intent was to come back next time and continue the sidequest. Although I pride myself on being a good improv GM, I can’t improv my way out of group disappointment at not “advancing the plot.”
This was a ostensibly a weekly game in a Star Wars sandbox, and we had clearly moved away from both of those things. I still like the idea of sessions based around stuff people came up with in their character backstory, but that shouldn’t be the focus. I need to be flexible both in scheduling and running the game, and so I must adapt and overcome. Cheesy as that sounds.
Which means rejecting plot lines and returning to west marches. Not that this was ever really set up as a west marches game, but it’s clear to me now that’s the only way it will survive.
What does that mean for the game? Rather than trying to rope as many folks as possible into one night a week, I’m going to run sessions on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings, the two days & times we’ve identified as working best with people’s schedules in general. Whoever makes it, makes it — and if we have at least three players, we have a session.
Hopefully, this leads to 1. Actually playing the fucking game; and 2. Moving towards a more episodic kind of structure. Less Andor, more Mandalorian.
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