Star Wars roleplaying

[Thant]

Hi, I'm in a need of an advice or two; me and my friends want to start roleplaying in SW universe but up till now we never even came close to it (we delved mostly in post-apoc, cyberpunk, dark fantasy, horror and similar settings).

The campaign should be a loosely based scenario with an metaplot that I will probably develop as sessions go by and I don't intend to get them into some movie-like epicness right away (we want to start low level and dig our way up). My players although Jedi/Sith crazy are very much interested in exploring other options this universe has to offer - smuglers, bounty hunters, troopers, diplomats - so I expect a pretty varied group of characters.

Being that it's my idea and my turn to be the GM I need some pointers - what settings would you recommend as a good starting points? Where to start off with books? What system is considered best for dealing with this kind of roleplay? Anything I should know about SW rpgs? And if someone could share some of their expiriences in SW roleplay that would really help :smallsmile:

[Mando Knight]

There are two good officially licensed systems: the old WEG d6 version (which has been rereleased as d6 Space if I remember correctly), and the more recent d20-based SAGA. The latter does a rather good job of supporting the not-Jedi characters in the game. I haven't played the WEG d6 version, but I've heard good things about it. The d20 versions before SAGA are significantly weaker. You can also run it based off of whatever generic sci-fi/space-opera/fantasy-friendly system you like, but you'll have to do the balancing yourself...

Unfortunately, although I could give you an essay on why SAGA edition is not only the best official Star Wars RPG, but also the best implementation of the d20 system so far, the books are out of print... and two of the ones I'd consider most essential (the core book and the Starships of the Galaxy supplement) are demanding 2-4 times their MSRP on Amazon.

[Golkiwu]

To build on Mando's statement, you are dealing with out of print books with either system. I can vouch for the D6 system for Star Wars. I have all of the books in print and found them in PDF format as well. the D6 system is easy and fun to run. It is very "sandbox" friendly, so starting up a game with just a basic concept is easy; everything is a d6. I always liked the D6 system because it allows for the super crazy highs and lows of the Star Wars stories to actually happen using the "Wild Die". One of your dice that are rolled is designated as the wild die and is used like this:
A 1 on the wild die is a critical failure, regardless of the total on the combined dice roll. I use a chart to see what happens when this occurs, and it happens to PC and NPC's alike. A roll of a 6 on the wild die means you re-roll that die and add the outcome to the total. If you roll another 6, then you repeat until you don't get a 6 again on the wild die. This allows for the really crazy things to happen, like putting a proton torpedo into an exhaust port by a half trained wanna-be jedi moisture farmer. It can get insane, and I love it.

Can't say much about the D20 stuff, as I have read them, but never played it.

[Thant]

Tnx both of you, but after some consideration me and my friends decided to go with the GURPS Star Wars (we're more into roleplaying than into strict rules) :smallsmile:

But now as a GM I find myself at odds with another question - is there a map or a chart that explains which species inhabit which sector of the Galaxy? Humans are everywhere to be found and that's ok, but what about other aliens? How other GMs assign species in their campaigns? I googled it a bit but couldn't find anything. This particular campaign is going to be set in the southern part of the Inner Rim, Jaso Sector - so if anyone knows what xenos are to be found there (other then Vratix (Thyferra) or where can I look for this sort of info, please share.

[Mando Knight]

But now as a GM I find myself at odds with another question - is there a map or a chart that explains which species inhabit which sector of the Galaxy? Humans are everywhere to be found and that's ok, but what about other aliens? How other GMs assign species in their campaigns? I googled it a bit but couldn't find anything. This particular campaign is going to be set in the southern part of the Inner Rim, Jaso Sector - so if anyone knows what xenos are to be found there (other then Vratix (Thyferra) or where can I look for this sort of info, please share.

Almost all species can be found everywhere, except for the rarer kinds, which mostly stick to their home planets and a couple colonies. Also, personally, I prefer using the more cylindrical directions (core/rim, trail/spin)... the "south" and "north" have no real meaning.

[The_Snark]

Like Mando says, the reason you won't find much information about which species inhabit which sectors can be found is that there isn't any. Long-distance hyperspace travel has been available and relatively cheap for a long time, so interstellar distance isn't much of an obstacle, and most places feature a healthy mix of species. If you want to look up/invent demographic information, you'll probably have to do it on a planet-by-planet basis, rather than sector-by-sector.

If you like, you can make up with demographic information for a place that your party's going to be spending time in, just to help you describe crowds and come up with NPCs on the fly. You don't need to, because it's perfectly valid in Star Wars to assume that a place is mixed enough that you can't tell the dominant species at a glance, but you can if you want. Generally, I wouldn't go any further than listing the three or four most common species, or a dominant species and a few significant minorities. It's not something you need to put a lot of effort into.

Isolated, rural communities will often be composed mostly of the native species (or the one that first colonized it if there are no natives): if you go to a small town on Sluis Van, you'll find mostly Sluissi. Common sense. The more cosmopolitan you get, the less this holds true. Spaceports, big cities, and well-connected planets may still have a native majority, but offworlders will be much more common—a big city on Bothawui will have plenty of non-Bothans mixed in.

For example:Let's say I'm inventing a deep-space refueling station called Ceta Five. I decide it was built by Duros, so they have a strong presence; but obviously there's a lot of interstellar traffic coming through this sort of place, so they're not a majority. I figure humans are almost as common as Duros if not more so, because humans are like cockroaches and get everywhere. I also want a small but noticeable population of Herglics (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Herglic), because they're another old starfaring race, and also because land whales are cool. Lastly, I decide to include a hive of Verpine technicians that lives on-station.

There are all kinds of other aliens on Ceta Five too: a Rodian bartender, a family of Ishi Tib, a Devaronian fence, and whatever other NPCs I feel like making up. But those are the most common ones.

[Sith_Happens]

But now as a GM I find myself at odds with another question - is there a map or a chart that explains which species inhabit which sector of the Galaxy? Humans are everywhere to be found and that's ok, but what about other aliens? How other GMs assign species in their campaigns? I googled it a bit but couldn't find anything. This particular campaign is going to be set in the southern part of the Inner Rim, Jaso Sector - so if anyone knows what xenos are to be found there (other then Vratix (Thyferra) or where can I look for this sort of info, please share.

The above two posts have pretty much answered your question already, but I would just like to add: Wookiepedia is your friend.:smallbiggrin:

[Thant]

KUDOS to both Mando Knight and The_Snark, you helped me a great deal; because without explicit demographic info I have full freedom when it comes to incorporating planetary population and creating npcs and that's the kind of things that make me smile a lot :smallsmile:


The above two posts have pretty much answered your question already, but I would just like to add: Wookiepedia is your friend.:smallbiggrin:

You said it. I currently have more then 50 tabs in my browser, sorted in groups and I'm reading like mad. MAD RANCOR ON DRUGS. There is just no end to the awesomeness that the Expanded Universe represents...and movies seem so pale in comparison. God I wish for a good SW crpg set in the Legacy Era^^

Also a few questions regarding interstellar travel: are there other ways to cover long distances in space except for hyperdrive? One of the main plot twists in the campaign I'm preparing is that the long range travel via hyperdrive tech & engines will be unavailable for some time or at the very least handicapped (the hd will simply not function because of some specific plot reasons), and I need to provide my players with a traveling boon of some sort...but I'm not sure what would be plausible enough to fit SW universe.

So, what about wormholes (I know Palpatine clone made one but that required massive amounts of concentrated dark side force so I guess that one is out...unless it's a natural wormhole), stargates, jumpgates, space slingshots, portals or some other types of drives? What would you utilize or what other ideas come to mind? For that short period of time players should have monopole on this sort of traveling so they would both have an enormous advantage over other (npc) parties involved but at the same time they would be prime target for practically anyone aware that they still can travel without a problem. If it could fit only into their ship (some sort of engine I guess) it would be great. If not, I'm open for all sorts of suggestions :smallsmile:

[Mando Knight]

The only well-developed FTL system used in Star Wars is the Hyperdrive. Why? Because it works. It crosses thousands of lightyears in a matter of days and the system (besides the Falcon) is extremely reliable.

There are other systems, such as the Hypergate (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hypergate), which generally also use Hyperspace mechanics, as that's the Star Wars galaxy's way of traveling at speeds greater than 1c.

If you're going to "break" Hyperspace (the only feasible way to stop Hyperdrive based travel), you'll need to present some kind of justification why it's broken... and I can't think of any that wouldn't have cataclysmic side-effects (this includes someone playing around with Centerpoint Station). Do note that most interplanetary communications also travel through hyperspace, and subluminal velocities severely limit spacecraft range (the Falcon was only able to limp over to Bespin in Empire because it actually does have a backup drive, though like most backups it's so slow that the Imp could have tracked and outrun it just as easily as Fett did).

[Sith_Happens]

The only well-developed FTL system used in Star Wars is the Hyperdrive. Why? Because it works. It crosses thousands of lightyears in a matter of days and the system (besides the Falcon) is extremely reliable.

There are other systems, such as the Hypergate (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hypergate), which generally also use Hyperspace mechanics, as that's the Star Wars galaxy's way of traveling at speeds greater than 1c.

If you're going to "break" Hyperspace (the only feasible way to stop Hyperdrive based travel), you'll need to present some kind of justification why it's broken... and I can't think of any that wouldn't have cataclysmic side-effects (this includes someone playing around with Centerpoint Station). Do note that most interplanetary communications also travel through hyperspace, and subluminal velocities severely limit spacecraft range (the Falcon was only able to limp over to Bespin in Empire because it actually does have a backup drive, though like most backups it's so slow that the Imp could have tracked and outrun it just as easily as Fett did).

Don't forget the similar Infinity Gates (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Infinity_Gate). Of course, those are guarded by whuffa worms (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Whuffa_worm), so have fun.:smallwink:

[Alejandro]

Also a few questions regarding interstellar travel: are there other ways to cover long distances in space except for hyperdrive? One of the main plot twists in the campaign I'm preparing is that the long range travel via hyperdrive tech & engines will be unavailable for some time or at the very least handicapped (the hd will simply not function because of some specific plot reasons), and I need to provide my players with a traveling boon of some sort...but I'm not sure what would be plausible enough to fit SW universe.

So, what about wormholes (I know Palpatine clone made one but that required massive amounts of concentrated dark side force so I guess that one is out...unless it's a natural wormhole), stargates, jumpgates, space slingshots, portals or some other types of drives? What would you utilize or what other ideas come to mind? For that short period of time players should have monopole on this sort of traveling so they would both have an enormous advantage over other (npc) parties involved but at the same time they would be prime target for practically anyone aware that they still can travel without a problem. If it could fit only into their ship (some sort of engine I guess) it would be great. If not, I'm open for all sorts of suggestions :smallsmile:

Can you elaborate on how you will have hyperdrives stop working? I mean, they have been in use, depending on which time period you choose, for literally thousands of years. There are multiple different speeds of hyperdrives, made by different companies and also by different species. It's ubiquitous.

More importantly, have you considered what will happen to the galaxy if all hyperdrives suddenly stop working? Literally, entire planet's worth of people will die. Coruscant will have the largest food riot in history, followed by the largest famine in history.

[LibraryOgre]

Can you elaborate on how you will have hyperdrives stop working? I mean, they have been in use, depending on which time period you choose, for literally thousands of years. There are multiple different speeds of hyperdrives, made by different companies and also by different species. It's ubiquitous.

More importantly, have you considered what will happen to the galaxy if all hyperdrives suddenly stop working? Literally, entire planet's worth of people will die. Coruscant will have the largest food riot in history, followed by the largest famine in history.

Well, it might not be the entire galaxy, but a significant mass effect could do quite a bit to mess with local hyperspace; Interdictor Star Destroyers create mass shadows that pop things out of hyperspace (the "Plow right through a star" part Han talked about).

My best guess for messing up local hyperspace, or, at least, severely curtailing it? Have a local bottleneck of stable hyperspace lanes... no one has mapped anything between point A and B except this one lane... then have an unexpected supernova. Boom. Gravitic anomaly that makes hyperspace travel out of system unstable.

[Thant]

Can you elaborate on how you will have hyperdrives stop working? I mean, they have been in use, depending on which time period you choose, for literally thousands of years. There are multiple different speeds of hyperdrives, made by different companies and also by different species. It's ubiquitous.

More importantly, have you considered what will happen to the galaxy if all hyperdrives suddenly stop working? Literally, entire planet's worth of people will die. Coruscant will have the largest food riot in history, followed by the largest famine in history.

Phew! I started with a simple explanation and ended up with half of the concept story told! Hope you don't mind the wall of text :smalltongue:

The camapign is set in the Legacy era, somewhere around 126-127 ABY in the late days of the Fel Empire, with very strong New Republic and just right before the Sith/Imperial Wars have begun; the Galaxy is overall in peace. So the tech is as advanced as it gets in SW universe and that includes hyperdrives (many models, many manufacturers, many modifications available).

Now, the backbone of the campaign plot is something like this. Somewhere around the Inner Rim - Expansionist region border (Jaso and Three-Besh sector [L14 IR <> L15 ER]) mysterious and strange things start to occur: freighters are gone missing while using well known trade routes, distress calls in the sector are somewhat more common then usual (mostly concerning their ship drives failing), few nobles and/or high-ranking military officers with their escorts vanish while being on vacation/sightseeing or quite simple recon/patrol missions...but nothing really big happens that it would alert the New Republic on a larger scale.

After a while a few asteroid mining outpost in the rimward part of Three-Besh sector go silent. Some merchants and diplomats start commenting how the voyages are rather peaceful and safe lately, praising the local military for doing such a good job at keeping order and celebrating the absence of pirates and raiders. Comms experience unusual levels of interference even when using short range communications not just hypercasters...And for some reason force users from a sector away feel drawn to this location (mostly the users that have dabbled in both dark and light side of the force, like the Jensaarai and Nightsisters; Jedi are a bit oblivious to this..."calling" as well as Imperial Knights; although the Sith feel somewhat itchy). But overall everything goes on as normal. And then the Ord Vaug system disappears from the grid, all attempts of contacting it failing miserably...and no one knows why. Panic starts to build up gradually as fear of the unknown spreads throughout the sector.

The reason for all this (unbeknown to the PCs ofc) is that somewhere from the extragalactic space, moving aslope along the X axis of the galaxy in a spiral path right through the above mentioned sectors, a large group of alien creatures is migrating. And they are stopping by in SW Galaxy to rest and nourish (simply because it was in their way).

These creatures (let's call them Transludens for now) are very big. Think star-size or even solar-system-size big. And made out of pure force. They are invisible to naked eye and most sensors, other then force sense (it seems as if they make surrounding space gleam and glow in colors never before seen by human or alien eyes when observed with this power) and by some very very strong and hard radiation source (they appear for a moment while basked in radiation then disappear again). They are not evil and they do not wish to harm anyone in a way a swarm of migrating eels wouldn't hurt anyone...they are simply animals (they are not intelligent in a way sentient species are, they are more like aware on a different level and from a different perspective).

Now, the Transludens, I planned for them to be a sort of "pyramid head" effect in this campaign. They are nigh indestructible but also quite passive and utterly uninterested in the affairs of the galaxy and the effect they have on it. The main problem with them is that they feed (or sometimes mate) on stars and that can cause some serious problems: some of the stars start to shut down almost instantly as a consequence, undergo the stages of their star life in less then a week and then burn out, ignite and go hypernova or even turn into a black hole (albeit short lived). The more of them is present, the more the laws of physic become quirky. I imagine them bending space and time as they pass in large numbers giving a strange outlook to space behind them, affecting large objects with gravity and anti-gravity at random, flinging planets from their orbits or freezing them in time, small black holes spawning and disintegrating in several seconds all across their path...

All these "extraordinary" effects are limited only to the sectors I mentioned earlier so it's not a galaxy wide crisis. When the crits leave a certain region, everything gets back to normal in a day or so. But the more we play this campaign the more severe the consequences of the presence of these creatures will be. I plan to run them straight from Ord Vaug to the Inner Rim all the way to Thyferra and halt the bacta production, causing some serious mayhem in their wake (and this is where the threat becomes really serious); at that point they will leave the galaxy for good and sail again through extragalactic space.

The PCs can derp around the creatures freely (although there is always a threat of something going wrong because of the messed up physics), learn about them, meditate on force and delve in new and before unknown knowledges/powers or even communicate with the creatures in a certain way (I prepared a lot of events and different mini-scenarios concerning the Transludens for such occasions); but no matter what they do they will not be able to stop them or get rid of them until they are gone by themselves (although I'm considering to leave an interesting roleplaying option where after the players have successfully communicated with the creatures the crits decide to follow the PCs in search of more food or something...so the players could even actually choose where the Transludens will pass before they leave and can actually decide the fate of the sector (the highest bidders will be spared :smallamused: ); but this is just a thought).

The population is in panic, system is crushing down and everything is slowly going to hell...many parties involved (Fel Empire, Hutt Crimelords, Sith, various pirates, mercenaries, freelancers and other interest groups) will see this as an excellent opportunity to secure additional assets, positions in the galactic game of power, get instantly rich by raiding unprotected worlds, pursue monopoly options when empty spaces are left in the economical infrastructure, declare wars on vulnerable territories, cancel diplomatic agreements and so on. Some sort of post-apocalyptic mess on a galaxy wide scale (though localized).

So the main thing in this campaign will be how will PCs react and deal with the rest of the world when the cataclysm of these proportions hits the sector? Who will they help and whose side they will join? Are they going to save as many people as they can or rejoice in the chance to pillage whatever they can? Will they play an important part in the diplomacy that will reshape the sector or covertly sabotage specific factions? Or they will just take an approach different from whatever some potential contractors may ask of them and do their own jig before the end comes (and passes)?...it should be a nice playground for all :smallsmile:

^
And that is why hyperdrive won't work (the closer you are to the source of the problem the more HD gets blocked and disfunctional) and why any other means of FTL travel will be more valuable than unobtainium :smallbiggrin:

I was thinking of introducing some sort of experimental technology similar to that found in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, more preciesly the gravity drive ship similar to one employed by Golan Trevize...hmmm. Your thoughts?

Infinity Gates sound interesting and I will definitely look more into them as an alternative way of travel.


Well, it might not be the entire galaxy, but a significant mass effect could do quite a bit to mess with local hyperspace; Interdictor Star Destroyers create mass shadows that pop things out of hyperspace (the "Plow right through a star" part Han talked about).

My best guess for messing up local hyperspace, or, at least, severely curtailing it? Have a local bottleneck of stable hyperspace lanes... no one has mapped anything between point A and B except this one lane... then have an unexpected supernova. Boom. Gravitic anomaly that makes hyperspace travel out of system unstable.

Some interesting proposals and you got a part of the story right :smallwink:

So what do you people think? Any ideas, comments, critique? Does this sound plausible at all? I still have more then enough time to get things right by the time we start our first session so everything is still on the table (http://memegenerator.net/cache/instances/400x/11/11979/12266820.jpg) :smallsmile:

[Alejandro]

If the creatures just want to eat, and have drifted into a galaxy, why would they leave that galaxy without consuming everything in it? Can they control where they go? If not, and they just drift, how do they avoid the black holes they might cause, which would likely kill them, as even light cannot escape a black hole?

[Vknight]

And if they are just energy just sick a massive number of 'Energy Spiders' upon them and I mean like thousands of the spiders.
Or use the force to make them have the least destructive course.
Such as making it seem the most plentiful or safe. Also Jedi do gain the ability to command or even dominate unintelligent life so if these things are just wild animals and the Jedi finds out they could eventually master a way to command the things
It just seems unfair for there to be no way to kill them.
Don't get me wrong its a cool idea I just think it needs work so it doesn't feel cheap.