First Time GM with all first time players

Hello,

So my IRL group of old High School friends and I are starting up a FFG Star Wars game with me as the GM over video calls (we all live in different parts of the country so this is really going to be the first regular thing we do with each other in nearly 10 years)

I have never GM'd before and they all have never played Pen and Paper games before.

My question, what pitfalls and mistakes should I avoid with a group of first time players being a first time GM?

I have decided to make it easy on myself in some ways playing an Adventure module (Beyond the Rim) and have actually been doing research by finding youtube videos of playthroughs to see how different GM's/players have handled the situations.

My overall experience is fairly low in roleplaying myself but I guess the bonus is everyone is new so other than messing up a system rule of some kind who is going to know any better?

Rule number one is always have fun. If this means you have to tweak or flat out ignore a rule in order for a player do something they really want to, just go with it. The rules are there to help you construct the story but shouldn’t be a barrier to having a good time.

When in combat, try to avoid simply saying "that’s a hit" or "you missed." Try to be immersive and make it feel like each character is really in the battle. Instead of missing, the player’s aim was dead on target but the villain deflected it with their lightsaber at the last minute or grabbed a nearby communications droid and used him as a shield. And when the players score a victory, turn the narration over to them. Let them describe in detail how they defeat their foe. They earned it, after all.

Start small. Avoid going too fast in world building or giving too many big guns/tools/ships.

Invite your players (and yourself) to react and invest in the more casual stuff and the big stuff will be that much more impressive when it comes.

Follow what picks your players curiosity and let most of the story go from there. If there is a stall or hesitation, give a straightforward simple quest for a clear, if temporary, direction.

#1 has always been -- its a game, its meant to be fun for ALL involved -- if the guidelines are interfering decide whether or not they are truly needed but be very careful that you do not make the game to easy as that can get boring rather fast

Another rule is, you are going to favor a player during each session -- figure out ahead of time who it is going to be and perhaps how you can favor them -- cycle through all the players this way -- for this means the favoritism is never lopsided and perceived as being unfair (aka unfun)

Per TheVagrant -- start small do not worry about what you are going to do tomorrow, just what is being done for the current session... do not be monty-hall (give to much out) but do not be too stingy either everyone likes the big toys

Keep in mind that Players never do what you expect them to -- adapt and move forward -- this may mean that Module you are running gets slid to the side and you end up running something different -- I usually start with 2 or 3 modules and then mix and match stuff so that the players always have choices and are allowed to freeform play while what they are really doing is simply jumping tracks -- if they do not perceive you are railroading them then they will not feel railroaded and most players do not care much for railroads (predetermined paths and basically predetermined outcomes)

When reading that module through, ask yourself questions about why and what if and maybe even tweak it to something more to your liking -- you do not have to run it verbatim

Take cues from your players as they are playing, I have changed what I was doing based off of player chatter more times than I can remember and they enjoyed it immensely... I have even created whole sessions on something that was not even in existence until the players started talking about it.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

We ran the beginner game of Force and Destiny awhile back which was fun but it definitely was something that I struggled with for Combat in describing the action. I like the idea of turning some of the narration over to them when the succeed.

As for starting small, it is one reason why I sort of went with the Adventure Module I did. Beyond the Rim seems to start pretty small and gets bigger as you go, both narratively and mechanically. Going from Social interaction to Investigation/exploration to Combat for the first "Episode". We are did a strict RAW character building process without much fluff.

We have an eclectic group so that might be the hard part balancing the different wants with some looking for the role play and some for the action. One of my friends is an English professor, so by the time we got to doing character creation he already had a 5 paragraph essay on his backstory. While one guy is a paramedic with less free time right now who basically just said "I am a smuggler who shoots stuff and flies good".

I really like this comment, in some ways I think it would be a good way to make you look good and the players feel like they are "getting" the story

PC: "I see how this was foreshadowed in our last game"
GM: "Yes, foreshadowed...I didn't just make this up after you guys said some small comment in the last game"

Yep that is pretty much how it worked ;) -- the more excited they sounded about any particular concept the more I tried to figure out how to weave into the current story -- sometimes that weaving was more "foreshadowing" on purpose this time but eventually it would come in sharp in full color

Of course creating an campaign based off of what players wanted to see and did not want to see is always my biggest thrill because then I can create a campaign that I know they will fully enjoy but getting that information out of players is like pulling a good tooth without novocaine.

Well they all seemed to have fun. Ran a wee bit long.

Take aways:

Online rolling tool we were using (discord bot) had some terrible rolls last night but kept it interesting.

The different approaches were evident, some of them were hyper combat motivated. It was hard to get the non-combat motivated players to move forward so we could get to the combat where everyone participated.

I am not a natural GM but I think I did ok