Setting the Tale

Getting players to engage with a setting is never easy, and getting players to use the setting to their advantage is even harder.

This time we talk about setting tone, suspense, using fear, where to glean some useful feedback, and many other things.

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Exploring a Tale

With an explorer you never know what you’re going to find. Whether you’re driving through a mountain pass trying to catch an imperial squad that stole your crystal skull, or finding the next rancor that your benefactor has paid you to take down. We talk about the many facets of the explorer and also delve a little into ways to illicit skill rolls that aren’t asked for by the GM.

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The Cantina Tale

We were asked by a listener (@brometheus) about how to use Cantinas effectively. We finally got around to looking at the question.

Why do we use them in a game?  What are we doing within them? And, how we can change the concept of a cantina to fit a few other situations?

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The Tale of Preparation

Ben and Cam talk about things in the Star Wars system that we find irritating or clumsy and how we deal with bringing them to the table as a good way of expanding the story.

We give advice on how to be prepared for a session, how to use your players characters as a guide for what problems will come up,  and how to let them happen without breaking the game.

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The Tale of Session 0

We bring in a very experienced GM and player to talk with us about Session 0, what goes into it and how we can use it to propel our game session, and group, forward.

We also talk about one way to deal with that character concept that just doesn’t want to get along with everyone else at the table.

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The Tale of Hiring Guns

Hired Guns are a huge pillar of Edge of the Empire. One of the six careers. But, the basis behind how you can make the most of them is not quite as easy as it sounds. We dive into the career and find some people who help bring the nasty pain to their opponents and how you can make an even better one.

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A Tale of Duties Core

A couple people poked us about Duty and how to use it in a game setting in a way that wasn’t just a second way of collecting experience. We started off simple and then it grew into something much deeper, like the duty mechanic itself.

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A Tale of Responsibility

We start talking about Force Unleashed and how to deal with players who have characters at that power level. We examine the tropes and raise a few good points about how you can make the consequences of their actions matter to them at the table. Continue reading “A Tale of Responsibility”

A Tale from the Front Lines

We saw the Rogue One preview. It was amazing. Then we started talking about running a campaign like that and asked ourselves how we would do it. One thing leads to another and suddenly we’re discussing how to make a decent war based campaign that doesn’t feel like an Edge of the Empire campaign.

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A Nonchalant Piloting Tale

Cam has a plan, and that plan is to finally talk about Fly Casual.

Which we did, and we pretty much love the book. There are so many stories that we can pull out of it. We discuss the kind of stories that make Fly Casual a great resource, talk about the three new specializations, and talk about some of the story ideas we have for the species.

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The Developing Tale Of Max Brooke

We were able to find Max Brooke and get him to talk about all of the fun things going on at FFG as well as some of the cooler aspects of Star Wars the RPG and why having a single campaign to run is a good idea.

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The Tale of the Second Story

Ben and Cam started talking about ships and the big concept ways of using them and the topic started to drift quickly. They slingshot past how to make things more interesting from the outset of a campaign and end up talking about how to keep a campaign interesting over the longer term and how to ratchet up the difficulty.

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The Tale of Shiny Things

Ben had no idea about equipment and was starting to worry he was doing it very wrong. Cam had some ideas so they started talking about it. Thankfully someone had the recorder going so all of you can benefit from the discussion on equipment and how to get it to mean something to the players while not being too giving or to miserly with it.

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Tale of Storied Players

Cam and Ben are back with another question that a fan asked. How is the system suited for letting the players in on the narrative reigns and not just making the GMs feel over taxed.

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Tales of The Lords of Nal Hutta

The Cracian thumper finally made it past the dreaded wampa line and delivered Bens copy of Lords of Nal Hutta. We take a look at it and what speaks to both Ben and Cam from the book.

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Who’s Tale is it Anyway?

We start off with a simple question of how to deal with a guard house full of security personnel with out shooting it up and expand into how we run low prep games and bring the players into a scene.

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The Tale of Corrupted Power

Ben and Cam talk about high powered adventurers and parties, tactics to deal with same both in FFG Star Wars and more generally, changing things up mid-campaign, and what to do when a player is about to break the game.

You can find us on Twitter at @DeuteriumIce and @Xphile101361

You can find us and much more at TheHydianWay.com

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We go say hello to Admiral Daala and dine with wookiee service and you can listen in below.

The Droids Strike Back Tale, Pt 2

This week we talk about narratively dealing with a timer, how to set aside rules when the party just doesn’t need them applied, and how to make space combat more interesting while using the rules we discussed in the last episode.

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The Runaway Droid Tale, Part 1

We take a look at the rules that govern space scenes in Fantasy Flights Star Wars and we try to make all the weird actions and maneuvers make sense.

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The Dying Campaign Tale

How many ways can you kill a campaign? We know quite a few and have witnessed many premature campaign deaths.

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Encouraging Weird Parties

Today we talk about the wonderful things that you can do to help make your player parties less ‘normal’. With interesting ideas for making weird party concepts, talk a little on how parties are their own character in their own right, and then go on to finding ways of making things even more interesting at character creation. How can a single free rank change the entire nature of a party?

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Creating the Paths to Take

We’re talking about preparation for players and how to use that prep time in a way that is effective.
We talk about simple ways to have adventure threads at the ready for when duty or obligation triggers, but also how to get the players to talk about morality and how to engage it with out alienating that player.

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Taking the Next Step

So you have a session 0 under your belt, why it’s under a belt we’ll never know, but now the players keep wanting to do things. How do you start getting an idea of where to take them and what to do with them.

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The Underside of the Galaxy

This time we look at criminal organizations, how to use them, one of many ways to use law enforcement with them. Even how to use the “Big Galaxy” approach when dealing with planetary Criminal organizations.

You can find us on Twitter at @DeuteriumIce and @Xphile101361

You can find us and much more at TheHydianWay.com

Please rate and review us.

Or you can sit down with us as we hide out from the bounty hunters we’ve seen and listen to more Tales from the Hydian way below.

Not the Normal Way

We had a bit of fun, starting with monsters and finding some ways to bring them into an adventure, but quickly the Wookiee and Trandoshan rivalry reared its head and we were off chasing ideas down.

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