The Dark Academy on Korriban

Game is done, hope you enjoyed it. I know it was a new system and new setting I hope people enjoyed it. Let me know how you enjoyed the game and any feedback is useful for the future.

I know it was a little rough and I know I wasn't the fastest getting sheets updated. Paperwork is the worst.

Anyways ask away if you had any questions or feedback.

Game was great. The dice system was hard to get used to, but after Day 3 I think I had it, more or less, under control. The only thing I didn't get a hold of yet was the Technology mod system. Thanks to Remmy I worked that out on the Shoto blade. Good thing I didn't have a tech character, cause it was the reality of this player as well

I was personally so fulfilled in so many ways that it's hard for me to think of anything that could have been done to improve the situation. You were accommodating to a ridiculous degree given the level of attention each of us asked for. The world was open enough to run around and have fun playing in, without being too burdensome and time consuming to get to know.

NPCs and storylines were amazingly well thought of, especially since most of the time it was based on things that were happening on the fly. The system was new to a lot of us, but you were patient and helped guide us through that process quite well. Overall a great experience from top to bottom.

The only thing I ever worried about was if we were putting too much pressure on you. I hope you enjoyed how we all acted in your world and we didn't make your RL world any more difficult because of our actions here in Korriban.

I greatly enjoyed the game, and I think you did a bang up job with everything. I do want to mention that my switching from Xevine was in no way in relation to GM-ing or anything like that.

2 points of feedback I'd like to give:

1. I do think you should look into getting a co-GM for Nar Shaddda, as I had a feeling around mid-game-ish that there were too many personal plots on your plate, at least from the outside. Those plots were the highlight of the game overall, but I think if someone could help and take some of those up in the future would be a good help

2. Advantages during events: I think the events were done a bit in L5R style: this many successes/raises, you get a boon or reward. Advantages were kinda just floating in the air. I think if those could be spent on something other than strain recovery in the future during events, that would make it all the more colorful. Same for threats.

Awesome game in one of my favorite settings with a great GM. 5 out of 5 lightsabers!

Rather than repeat myself for the thousand praises I've given, here's a few more specific points I always appreciated and loved.

- You made note of things with characters that could happen, saw possibilities that could help build or tear down a character that drove their personal story forward and put that in motion as best you were able.

- Sorta touching with the above. Loved how NPC's just showed up in places, and not just every once in a while but fairly regularly you came in and placed an NPC there.

- New system, it always felt great with how you worked it out and it all worked well. Made learning the system feel nice and combat wasn't that scary after a few rounds.

Now, this is just more praise cause I had to add it in, but... I love how you managed to juggle so many personal story lines and then even made them bash up and intermingle with each other all over the place. Had to be a lot and it was amazing. That you "slacked" on updating sheets can EASILY be forgiven, cause that's nothing. Managed to keep everything else great and fun, and thank you so much for your efforts.

I'm really bad at writing up thoughts so... I tried at least? Uhm, surely there are more good things and more things I could think of to say possibly but as stated just prior I'm bad at this.

Once again thanks for all the hard work. I am confident that you made this game enjoyable for all the players here. The system was new and is still taking a bit of getting used to. I still haven't really done much in combat to get a better grasp of it yet but looking forward to more in the future.

I had an amazing time with this game. Very well run, excellent narrative and personal plots. A great time. As others have mentioned it's a brand new system for many of us, and one designed without the scale here in mind I wager. You really made it work.

I think mechanically/narrative wise one of my favorite things were the small time skips. They added a lot to the game I believe. I was also a fan of all the NPCs. They were really well done.

I think my only real criticism is more with the system in the morality. I'll have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of randomly generating morality each session as it seems to cheapen those actions that are in line with morality and put a lot of favor on those that are against it. It likely helped you out and saved you time to not have to worry about morality a great deal since you just had to watch for those instances where characters were acting counter to it.

I loved the open feel to the game, and the adventurous nature of it. That made it a blast to just run around at times and see how we could get in trouble.

Oh yeah! I want to add that the small bits that changed the setup - half a day at Korriban station, couple of days at dig site, Yavin, time skips - were a great idea, and helped a lot to make the game more dynamic and fun.

I do want to make adjustments to how events work, advantages and threat are designed to give a roll more variables to it; it is designed to allow players to work together with the GM to better build a narrative of the scene. It’s something I want to do better for Nar Shaddaa.

Definitely want a co-GM, it can be tough to provide attention to everyone.

As for NPCs I am glad that worked out, I always see NPCs in many games as missed chances or if the GM does not have the time it can take a while to get a conversation/scene done with them. Also I wanted them to show up and just do stuff even if they were not really needed. I didn’t want them to be the stars but I did want them to be fun and move stories forward, glad people enjoyed them.

Time skips mainly existed because I felt like 11 days and then graduate would have been kind of boring, I wanted it to feel like time was spent and that the days highlighted were the exciting moments between works of work.

I had an absolute blast, even changing my sleep patterns to get in more game time while folks were online. That says a lot.

Overwhelming thanks to Dapper for running a wonderful game, by himself, that managed to give everyone time for personal stories I was particularly grateful for the cast of memorable characters, and getting to do some really interesting things that I hadn't conceived of, yet which became integral to the character.

The game system was entirely new to me, and I might have made a couple of changes if I'd been more familiar with it, but in truth I just had so much fun with it that I'm glad I came in blind. I am already looking forward to the next game, where I will most likely be continuing Jo'ren's story on Nar Shadaa

I thought the events worked well, and the cast of characters was very memorable. How much of that was done on the fly? Did you have characters prepped or did things just occur to you that worked. The whole Kalen/HK/Thy Yulani storyline was a big highlight for me, and working in the story end set piece with Exar Kun was great. Real Thy being woven into other people's stories worked really well in the end too.

A couple of thoughts:

1. An assistant GM for helping with the paperwork side of things might be useful, although if future games are of a similar size then maybe that's not an issue.

2. Modding lightsabers. I think the system we ended up with is the right one (i.e. you can only do mods for your own crystal). This gives a nice boost for those who want to invest time/credits/xps into it.

3. Player destiny spend threads. I thought the game started and ended well in regards to these, but there was a period in the middle where it seemed like everyone was going out every day for their own personal thread expecting some sort of loot without discussing destiny use with you before hand. I think it was partly due to people trying to experiment with Destiny points. We were probably all guilty of it at one point or another, but it might be worth having an every other day limit to these so that the GM doesn't get overwhelmed with them. Then again, it was just my perception that it was starting to get overloaded, so if you (the GM) didn't find it a problem, then there's no need to fix anything

4. Time skips. These were fantastic for the pacing and gave a nice reason for why we were suddenly better at things.

5. His name was Gerald Hin. Thanks again for the memorable NPCs, I enjoyed them popping up in threads and doing their own thing.


Overall this was a wonderful experience for me and one that I needed after suffering from L5R burnout. I'm looking forward to the next Star Wars game so I'll be watching for it like some sort of big red Sith hawk

In regards to co-GM-ing, paper work and Nar Shadda, I think it depends on how much you want to use Duty and Obligation from Age of Rebellion and Edge of the Empire. Truthfully, both systems seem more complicated than Morality to me, though they do present better story hooks. Still, I do think another GM to help keep track of those and other paperwork would be helpful, as well as taking up some story space, so to say.

I want to say thank you for the game! I've said it many times before, but something short, new, different and small was exactly what I needed after my exhaustion with The Wall. And this game was exactly that, and it was a great fun learning a new system and play in a setting I am a big fan of.

I want to thank you for some of the scenes I've gotten, especially the one with Lord Scourge and the current one at the temple; both gave me chills writing.

I greatly look forward to Nar Shaddaa and what you will do there, and I hope we weren't too much of a hassle for you.

I had been falling out of the PBP groove for a while, I think part of that is the L5R system itself and my relative unfamiliarity to it. Coming in mostly blind (I had an idea of how dice worked at the start, but not how they effected things/what you can do with them), it helped me enjoy this game that much more. In addition, the Star Wars universe helped a lot, it's something I'm more familiar with. And how could I leave out Dapper's excellency? I haven't been this hooked into a PBP... ever. So thank you, Dapper, this was great.

A few points:

I enjoyed the events a lot. Though I didn't participate in any bonus events (by choice), I kept a close eye on them. They never really felt forced (pun intended).

NPCs were lovely. Not gonna repeat everything that everybody else was said. Only suggestion is, again, the Co-GM. A lot of NPCs this game for one GM, and I have a feeling there will be more in Nar Shadaa.

During the start of the game, I felt a bit like my character was stagnating, and had even considered making a new one. But after a small intervention from Dapper with some bad dreams, I suddenly had a bit more to work with on Nunki. And then the Republic happened. And from what I've seen, most (if not all) players had some kind of personal story for themselves. Very rarely have I felt like my characters were part of a bigger picture. This is one of those cases. Thank you.

I was a bit worried when I saw the extra time slots, especially for one GM. But it worked out, and I know quite a few people used all their time slots on some days. On another note with time, the time skips were great. Gave us 'time" to develop our characters and create new relationships in ways that are hard to convey on screen.


Can't wait for Nar Shadaa, haven't been this excited for a game to come around in a while.

I am always up for a new system in a pbp format, and this was wonderful. I really can't praise it enough. It was well structured, well run, and just overall fun to play. Yeah, some of the events could have been a touch more diverse in their mechanics to allow for creative or designed use of advantages but overall, for a first try this went remarkably well.

I think it was simple enough to allow those of us who had never played the system before to really get the feel of the dice rolling, and the general combat (even those of us that weren't in any combat). Something I would like to hear about is what people thought of the full combat system. I only got to watch from the sidelines, but overall was it good, was it 'fast'? Were there ways that they could be structured to make them faster?

As for everything else, I am blown away by your ability to balance so many personal stories. I loved that backgrounds and the totality of the characters was allowed to come into play from time to time. I enjoyed that you were willing to allow us to experiment a little with our characters. While my rituals and whatnot won't work exactly the same next time (crystal modification being a personal experience), that you let me have them at all was a wonderful bit of fluff that really added dimensions to my character.

Overall, I give it a definite 'A' for all the work you did on this and all the good that came out of it. I think a co-GM will help a lot with any time issues you might have had, plus it might allow for a few more threads to be run simultaneously, but honestly I am shocked by your ability to get to all of our threads so consistently and keep all of our personal stories straight. Truly, kudos.

Combat is pretty fast, lethal and allows for big swings in momentum plus the idea of helping each other is really fun. I would often make the rolls and then just incorporate the threat and advantage into them to make them a better narrative. I didn’t want Character a shoot then character b swing, I wanted it to be more cinematic with flurries of attacks that account for the actual damage that mimic the movies than swing at due B do damage rinse and repeat even if mechanically that is what happened.

The fight with the Cathar rebel and her slave rebels was a fun one for me, I enjoyed the first Jedi fight with Kristal and Sylvain, I really liked all of the fights and scenes.

As for NPCs I really liked Gerald but he was marked for death as soon as AI created him, he was capable of being saved but I figured that chance would be low. I am glad people enjoyed him and the others many NPCs were borne from interactions and I was glad that Thy worked out as a fun reoccurring character for several people. I know Baras could be frustrating but if you are familiar with the source he is a scheming jerk who seems to have every angle covered. I was probably most nervous with Lord Scourge and Darth Traya, and to an extent HK. All were fun but I didn’t want them to come as too gimmicky.

I did like that Zash became a center point for many characters, she is one of my faves and I hope I did her justice. I hope Jaina was not too stand offish, she was just very focused on her role and I even liked Harad turned out. Lord Savas was a surprise for me and it came together well once he became Snape with a mask. Even the late addition of Kristal’s trio was fun, but for me many of the characters were created as reactions to things in game or during the interim breaks.

Magara-sha was fun, and I liked her evolution as she ebbed back and forth as ally and enemy. Spindral… well I am a sucker for crazy old people who are fonts of wisdom if you can put up with them. One of my main goals early on was not to have a failure just be a dead end. Failing should be just as fun as succeeding.

No worries about Scourge there. I could practically hear his voice when reading the scene.

Thanks for your thoughts on the NPCs and combat.

For those who are interested I was initially planning for Jo'ren to be more of a jaock-like dick to everyone, and so calling Gerald 'Gerry' in the pre-game was an attempt at seeing if name shortening got under peoples' skin (which it did with Xevine). But then I changed my mind about what I wanted from Jo'ren, and the decision to call Gerald 'Gerry' led to my deciding that actually they were genuinely friends. In the end that led to some of my favourite moments in the game and some real character development, so thanks for rolling with it. I also figured he would die from the moment we first met him, but it led to great RP

I really enjoyed each of the NPCs, they each were unique and added another interesting dimension to play off of.

Baras was great and fit in quite well with the Baras that emerges in the game. I loved the addition of Sylvain's parents and the exchanges he had with them... and Raven's exchange with Baras was one of my favorite things to read in the whole game. Had a great surprise factor.

I think I was one of very few that came to this game with a lot of experience with this system and I can say it showed that you were just as familiar with it as I was.

You've even told me a few things that got the Force user in my home game a solid slap on the knuckles for cheating.

Your work here has been brilliant and I'm just sorry I wasn't in a healthy state to play properly myself. Keep up the good work and do get yourself a Co-GM for Nar Shaddaa. We don't want another GM burnt by overwork. I only joined this game because my Therapist encouraged me to do so, I'm happy I listened to her, even if it was only a handful of posts.

Good Boy! Dapper Dog. Have a bikkit!!!!!