I ran our first session of Edge of the Empire. I'm calling this series The Outer Rim Blues. The crew out of leads return to Gelgelar Free Port, their base of operations. But not before having to fix their YT-3000s sublight drives by scrapping their dorsal gun for parts! They meet and cut a deal with a Mandalorian named Thane Rook. He'll tell them where their refugees are going and give them a contact in exchange for Drace, our pilot doing the Corellian Run for him. They are headed to Eriadu to meet an agent of the Black Sun cartel. while waiting for cargo loaders to load tanks of Gelgelar swamp gas and crates of mold for export. An old co-worker of Darro Vane (PC, Outlaw Technician) arrives with two speeders worth of aliens and blasters hot on his trail. This forces the crew to depart quickly, leaving half the cargo behind.

Assembled by Gorm on Gelgelar, our crew's first job (off-screen) together goes sideways. They failed to rescue a group of Iktochi refugees, lost them, and Huuroch (Wookie Explorer) is badly injured, the injury is backstory(color) so the player can have a Wookie with a bionic arm and leg! This rescue, the Iktochi, is a player-created and driven thing. So I'm running with it.

I love, love running the first session of a game series as "A Day in the Life..." I pick a small trouble from each of the players’ starting Obligations to create a situation from. Obligations are Edge of the Empire's fiction/situation mechanic. Going into the first session, I have prepped a ship malfunction, finding leads on the missing refugees, and the return of an old...acquaintance from a bad job thing. I’m ready to drop these situations in favor of where the players go, but in the event they are stuck, I have these.

I have been using the Now Sheet concept from Champions Now to organize my game session stuff for a couple of years now. A sheet per session or major session change works great for me. It's like BuJo for GM prep!Here's what the Outer Rim Blues Now sheet looks like after session one.

Gorm (Duros) contactGav, Landing pad ownerThane Rook - Mandalorian.

In Edge of the Empire, once per session, the GM can roll on the combined obligations table to see what trouble pops up. For session two, I got Huurach:

Betrayal. We've decided in session zero the rescue mission was sabotaged, and someone set them up. I think while on the Othello ship, someone from the old job is surprised Hurrach is still alive and maybe gets closer to verify before informing their masters. This should give the player ample room to take action. I will put the NPC in the way, then try to pull them out quickly. May the dice be with the players!

The BIG action is around meeting Lyra Dax, an agent of Black Sun, and getting information on these Iktotchi refugees. And she has information to give. I don't know what she wants yet. There are solid rules for social engagements in EotE, so this may be a roleplaying encounter developing stakes, and then we put it to the dice. I do want to slow things down on the Othello and explore the Black Sun space more.

There's an open-loop complication from the last session. The folks chasing Korrin had a tracker on The Blue Harvest ship. The players moved it to another outbound ship, asking that pilot to let them know who showed up. Of course, that call will be that pilot's last message as his crew gets blastered-up by the hunters.

And I have rules for Sabacc!! We need to get a Sabacc game going!!