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Yora
2014-01-15, 03:38 PM
We got quite a number of threads about different star wars RPGs and all kinds of rules questions. But personally as a GM, I think the hardest part is often the work that doesn't have anything to do with rules, but is about creating the backgrounds and personalties of NPCs and the outlines of the adventures themselves. Translating everything into stats for characters, creatures, vehicles, and machines comes after that, once you have decited who and what is actually going to appear.

I personally consider myself quite a huge Star Wars fan and probably read all the novels and played all the games that were released before 2000. But even so, I find it a bit daunting to run a campaign in this setting I am already so very familiar with.
The standard RPG plot of meeting in a bar and getting hired to retrieve an object from a dungeon doesn't really work in this setting. You can still use it as a setup, but then everyone would still be expecting some big twist coming up pretty soon that starts the actual story. Or in other words, the hunt for treasure and gaining new levels isn't what people would expect from playing a Star Wars game. You expect outrageous stunts and facing impossible odds, but then still making a daring escape rather than taking on all the enemies in a massive battle. (That is, unless you have an equally huge number of allies coming to your help.)

One complicating factor is, that the real big enemy is always the Sith. In different eras they come in different shapes and forms, but it has always been that one big eternal struggle between the Jedi and the Sith. Which obviously means the PCs can never actually gain the final victory.
So my first question and suggestion for a topic is this:

How do you chose a 'campaign goal' for a Star Wars campaign?

I think it generally comes down to three possible setups: Jedi, Republic/Rebells, and Scoundrel. Parties would probably always fall into one of these three categories. Setting a goal for a party of Rebells and Republic Soldiers is probably the easiest. Conquer and secure one planet, system, or sector from the Empire/Sith. This can be broken down into several battles and missions and at the end you have achieved a clear victory. The enemy may not be destroyed, but for this specific area, you have won.
But for a Jedi or Scoundrel campaign, I don't really know what a good setup would be. Any ideas or thoughts?

BWR
2014-01-15, 05:50 PM
It's your game, you can always go non-canon and declare a final victory, or declare that a final victory has already occurred. Maybe the PCs will be instrumental in eradicating the Sith for all time. It will probably not stop Force Users from going bad later on, but you've stopped them from ever becoming as big a threat as the Sith. You can also declare the when Luke killed the Emperor, that was it for the Sith. Again, there might very well be bad FUs later, but if there weren't enemies you wouldnæt have a SW game.

For Jedi games, decide what you think the most important aspect of the Jedi is: is it awesome Force powers and hacking away through hordes of enemies with a lightsaber (a la the Jedi Knight games) and never mind DSPs unless you kill a baby? Is it introspection and discovering deeper mysteris of the Force? Is it stopping the Sith? Is it ethical quandries and diplomacy and peace keeping and deep roleplaying?
Design adventures around what you descide.

As for Scoundrels, steal shamelessly from Firefly. You can play up the Rebel angle if you play in the appropriate period.

TheThan
2014-01-15, 06:21 PM
That’s the great part about the starwars setting. You can decide on just about anything for a campaign goal.

I have a campaign set up where the goal of the party is to build their own shipping company up from scratch and become rich.

I’ve also wrote a campaign where the players are a squad of imperial storm troopers fighting rebels. The goal is to try to crush the rebellion in a certain sector of the galaxy.

I’ve written a campaign where the players are Jedi and they’re goal is to defeat the Sith s they try to subtly take over the galaxy.

You can create any sort of story or villain you want. A single imperial Moff can be the primary villain of an entire campaign. a starwars campaign doesn’t have to revolve around jedi vs sith, or empire vs republic; you can run those sorts of campaigns if you want, but there’s nothing forcing you to do it.

There’s far less constraints in the starwars universe than in other popular franchises. You just have to figure out what you want to write a story about, and what your characters want to do.

Cirin
2014-01-15, 06:51 PM
As for the classic "you meet in a bar" type mission. . .that's what Han Solo did, he essentially met a farmboy and a Jedi in a bar and got into a wild adventure.

For adventures in the Old Republic era, the Jedi Council is a good patron to give assignments to characters. A Jedi PC gets the mission, then brings his friends along to help. As the Clone Wars go on, the Republic can get more and more desperate for people to work for them, as losses mount.

During the Rebellion, the Rebel Alliance had "Mission Teams" working for Alliance Intelligence which were semi-autonomous groups of eclectic individuals working on behalf of the rebellion to perform sabotage, espionage and a wide variety of missions against the Empire. Translation: They were PC adventuring groups (basically the position was created by West End Games in their d6 SWRPG as an easy way to work PCs into a game)

Freelancers like bounty hunters, smugglers and such have so many options. A Star Wars bounty hunter is much like a typical D&D adventuring Fighter: a heavily armed and armored vagabond who kills ostensibly-bad people for money, paid either by private individuals or by governments.

Basically I never had problems like that with GM'ing Star Wars, it's a very big galaxy out there, and there is room for lots of adventures.

CombatOwl
2014-01-15, 06:55 PM
The standard RPG plot of meeting in a bar and getting hired to retrieve an object from a dungeon doesn't really work in this setting. You can still use it as a setup, but then everyone would still be expecting some big twist coming up pretty soon that starts the actual story. Or in other words, the hunt for treasure and gaining new levels isn't what people would expect from playing a Star Wars game. You expect outrageous stunts and facing impossible odds, but then still making a daring escape rather than taking on all the enemies in a massive battle. (That is, unless you have an equally huge number of allies coming to your help.)

One complicating factor is, that the real big enemy is always the Sith.

Why? There's plenty of other enemies to fight. Ancient terrors from beyond the galaxy, an immensely powerful crime lord, space pirates, a rogue Jedi who's got a point and is gathering followers, etc.

Not to mention any game where the characters fight the Empire post-ROTJ. Or, alternately, maybe the characters are Imperials, dealing with those traitorous bandits in the rebel alliance?


In different eras they come in different shapes and forms, but it has always been that one big eternal struggle between the Jedi and the Sith.

Only if you ignore everything that happens in between.


How do you chose a 'campaign goal' for a Star Wars campaign?

Railroading. Seriously, it's a setting that requires some hefty rails and a powerful locomotive.


I think it generally comes down to three possible setups: Jedi, Republic/Rebells, and Scoundrel.

Explorers on the edge of the galaxy, perhaps during one of the many Galactic Surveys. Jedi dissidents during the early Republic, setting out from the Republic's worlds to find a place to explore their own conceptions of the force. That's a fair bit different from Jedi in service to the Republic, which is the normal assumption. Hell, there are rules for running Yuuzhan Vong if you wanted.


Parties would probably always fall into one of these three categories. Setting a goal for a party of Rebells and Republic Soldiers is probably the easiest. Conquer and secure one planet, system, or sector from the Empire/Sith.

If they're "rebels," their goals should probably be a bit less lofty than that. Like "strike a real blow against the Empire that will support the wider Rebel cause."


This can be broken down into several battles and missions and at the end you have achieved a clear victory. The enemy may not be destroyed, but for this specific area, you have won.
But for a Jedi or Scoundrel campaign, I don't really know what a good setup would be. Any ideas or thoughts?

Scoundrel games ought to begin with a lot of debt for everyone. The sort of debt you can never really get out of--where you would need The Excessively Big Score to ever pay it off. The debt is always [plot] sized.

Jedi games are even easier, but it depends greatly on what sort of jedi game you want to play--and whether it's a party of nothing but jedi, or one mixed with others.

Kid Jake
2014-01-15, 10:54 PM
Just because most people expect to go Sith hunting when they roll up a Star Wars character doesn't mean that that's the way you've got to take the story. I had a fairly epic (if I do say so myself) droidpocalypse event in one of my favorite campaigns.

The PCs were basically New Republic accountants auditing the Imperial records and trying to get things running smoothly again. While going through records from R&D they found an Imperial computer virus dubbed 'Herald' meant to subtly infect mechanical systems and report suspicious conversations directly to command, directly sabotaging treasonous plots as a last resort.

Thinking that this sounds like a pretty swell find that could rival if not eclipse the Bothan Spy Network, and potentially get them a promotion, the PCs track down the space age spyware and give it a test run. They find out why the Empire scrapped it almost immediately when the lone infected droid infects the ship they're on; which infects its maintenance droids and then launches them via escape pods onto the planet below.

The PCs had to quarantine the planet (which contained military tech including a cutting edge battle-droid production facility) before Herald could spread out among the stars using only their wits and what little they could scavenge. At the end they definitely felt like they had made a difference in the galaxy, even though nothing outside of their little sector was affected and only a handful of people even knew what happened.




Or, alternately, maybe the characters are Imperials, dealing with those traitorous bandits in the rebel alliance?

This is also a fantastic idea. I ran the same group through a campaign where I made the Empire as sympathetic as possible and cast the Rebels as anarchic rabble-rousers trying to destroy the galaxy's hard won stability. It took place over a period of about 20 IG years and they went from raw recruits to commanding the Empire's elite.

There was a little intersecting with the films, like being the ones who tracked and captured Leia; or them being there at the Battle of Endor and having to flee celebrating Rebel troops after just watching their beloved Emperor blow up and hearing the heart-wrenching news of Lord Vader's betrayal, but otherwise you'd almost forget it was specifically Star Wars if not for having to arrest Hutts and tip the cute Twi'lek at the cantina.

Kato
2014-01-16, 06:17 AM
While I've only let my group do standalone adventures so far, I'll have to agree there is so much variety in the setting you can really come up with anything.
Also, you seem to be limiting your ideas to the "good" guys. Why not allow a campaign where a Sith apprentice (or a group of them) aims to overthrow their master? And in the end they can all slaughter each other to see who gets the spoils :smallamused: (Really, playing Sith is a whole lot of fun as long as you don't mind your character getting backstabbed by the rest of the party)


We used to have two Sith apprentices in the group - who I'll admit were pretty low on the evil scale - but now we switched to a group of evil morally ambiguous normal smugglers. Lately they've been captured by a group of Mandalorians occupying a space station and they just try to get off/survive. Depending on how detailed/large you make the station I guess that could be worth a campaign.

Really, there are huge possibilities in what they could try to achieve, even if they need to be good. If you want a larger goal send them after one specific Sith Lord to take out and you can have a bunch of planets or stations or destroy a fleet (with their own if you are into space battles.)

Brookshw
2014-01-16, 06:33 AM
Personally I prefer to use pre-hyperspace wars as the era when I run star wars. The world is still familiar enough that the PCs have a good idea what it's like but you have a lot more flexibility as far as Canon goes (not that you need to pay attention to Canon in the first place).

With the number of crime bosses out there, ancient races that have disappeared, infinite planets with whatever races you want to put on them you can run just about anything in the setting though the era has a part to play. Exploration, political agendas, you name it. The Jedi/Sith dichotomy is very much a corner stone of the setting but it doesn't need to be the focus of the campaign.

GungHo
2014-01-16, 10:15 AM
For Star Wars, I ask folks what they want to do and then set them up in (or soon about to join) an organization that will do what they want to do.

Jedi obviously go into the Jedi Order, assuming it exists in the time period.

Sith obviously go into a Sith organization, of which there are dozens, depending on the time period.

Smugglers and Bounty Hunters go into one of the many guilds/organizations that exist.

It's a little harder to do truly mixed groups... as then you have to start creating over-arching conflicts. While it sounds easily relatable, as people do that in D&D all the time, in Star Wars all the different organizations have different pulls on people, and you have to balance those out and keep Han Solo from trying to constantly split the party.

CombatOwl
2014-01-16, 10:37 AM
Just because most people expect to go Sith hunting when they roll up a Star Wars character doesn't mean that that's the way you've got to take the story. I had a fairly epic (if I do say so myself) droidpocalypse event in one of my favorite campaigns.

The PCs were basically New Republic accountants auditing the Imperial records and trying to get things running smoothly again. While going through records from R&D they found an Imperial computer virus dubbed 'Herald' meant to subtly infect mechanical systems and report suspicious conversations directly to command, directly sabotaging treasonous plots as a last resort.

Thinking that this sounds like a pretty swell find that could rival if not eclipse the Bothan Spy Network, and potentially get them a promotion, the PCs track down the space age spyware and give it a test run. They find out why the Empire scrapped it almost immediately when the lone infected droid infects the ship they're on; which infects its maintenance droids and then launches them via escape pods onto the planet below.

The PCs had to quarantine the planet (which contained military tech including a cutting edge battle-droid production facility) before Herald could spread out among the stars using only their wits and what little they could scavenge. At the end they definitely felt like they had made a difference in the galaxy, even though nothing outside of their little sector was affected and only a handful of people even knew what happened.




This is also a fantastic idea. I ran the same group through a campaign where I made the Empire as sympathetic as possible and cast the Rebels as anarchic rabble-rousers trying to destroy the galaxy's hard won stability. It took place over a period of about 20 IG years and they went from raw recruits to commanding the Empire's elite.

There was a little intersecting with the films, like being the ones who tracked and captured Leia; or them being there at the Battle of Endor and having to flee celebrating Rebel troops after just watching their beloved Emperor blow up and hearing the heart-wrenching news of Lord Vader's betrayal, but otherwise you'd almost forget it was specifically Star Wars if not for having to arrest Hutts and tip the cute Twi'lek at the cantina.

The last time I played an imperial, he was an Inquisitor who ended up tagging along with/"pursuing" a Jedi who escaped from his custody. He realized that the Jedi (who was a PC who had been around for awhile and was quite a bit higher in level) was too powerful for him to subdue, and he didn't want to stick around to be a scapegoat and "fail him for the last time." So, rather than get force gripped to death, he left with the Jedi. The Jedi figured that the Inquisitor wasn't so evil as to be irredeemable, so it worked out.

That character had some seriously different motivations in that game. Really, really self-interested and resentful about his loss of status.

Kid Jake
2014-01-16, 02:54 PM
The last time I played an imperial, he was an Inquisitor who ended up tagging along with/"pursuing" a Jedi who escaped from his custody. He realized that the Jedi (who was a PC who had been around for awhile and was quite a bit higher in level) was too powerful for him to subdue, and he didn't want to stick around to be a scapegoat and "fail him for the last time." So, rather than get force gripped to death, he left with the Jedi. The Jedi figured that the Inquisitor wasn't so evil as to be irredeemable, so it worked out.

That character had some seriously different motivations in that game. Really, really self-interested and resentful about his loss of status.

I tried to keep them away from the Empire's obviously evil shenanigans like force choke tantrums and focus more on their role as universal peacekeepers. I tried to make the Empire more overbearingly authoritarian than cartoon super-villain. Although they met Grand Moff Tarkin a few times and always dreaded it because he directly controlled their funding; the only time they interacted with Vader was after they'd tracked down the Tantive IV and helped bring Leia onboard; the fearsome Sith lord told them they did good and then shipped them off to Coruscant to root out dissidents.

They reacted about like you'd expect a group of soldiers who the VP himself had personally lead against a terrorist cell and then flashed them a thumbs up would and often taunted fellow soldiers that THEY had been personally commended by Darth Vader himself. That is until after the Battle of Endor when that stopped being something to brag about.

Yora
2014-01-17, 01:28 PM
I am thinking about running a (KotOR Era) Scoundrel campaign during semester breaks, which we can play when not everyone from our regular C&C group is in the city.
But with scoundrels, I am finding it particularly diffcult to come up with a long term goal. As Rebels or Imperials conquest always works well, and as Jedi or Sith you can fight over some magical force artifact.
But finding something for scoundrels is more difficult. I think most scoundrel stories from the universe are about performing some specific task to stop other people from hunting you. Which makes for great one-shots but I can't see how to make such a premise into the hook for a longr running campaign. Any ideas.

CombatOwl
2014-01-17, 05:03 PM
I am thinking about running a (KotOR Era) Scoundrel campaign during semester breaks, which we can play when not everyone from our regular C&C group is in the city.
But with scoundrels, I am finding it particularly diffcult to come up with a long term goal. As Rebels or Imperials conquest always works well, and as Jedi or Sith you can fight over some magical force artifact.
But finding something for scoundrels is more difficult. I think most scoundrel stories from the universe are about performing some specific task to stop other people from hunting you. Which makes for great one-shots but I can't see how to make such a premise into the hook for a longr running campaign. Any ideas.

A [Plot] sized Debt, which [some mysterious organization] has offered to pay off for them, if only they track down [the legendary McGuffin].

Kid Jake
2014-01-17, 05:50 PM
They could be trying to establish an independent smuggling operation in direct competition with the Hutts. The party starts off with a junker ship and whatever moxy they can scrounge up and try to make it big in the galaxy.

They start off running minor errands; gaining more power and influence as they go along until they're running their own little criminal empire and have to dodge/take out the big players. Don't just limit yourself to a 'Star Wars' story, take a stab at other genres in the Star Wars universe. I think 'Scarface: In Space!' would make for a very interesting campaign. Bonus points if at one point the PCs engage in a spice-fueled rampage against overwhelming odds in their stately manor.

Yora
2014-01-18, 09:53 AM
I guess a complication would be that you can't really say you are running a "Scoundrel Campaign" and then expect the PCs to be all like Han and Lando and then try to do the right thing once they get dragged into a situation they never wanted anything to do with.
The option to simply take the cash and walk away is always present.

NickChaisson
2014-01-19, 04:10 AM
While the option to just walk away may always be there, the people paying them obviously would not like that. They could hunt them, sure. but what if they impounded their ship and the party had to find some way to either get their ship back or find another one. (Using the beginning of KOTOR 1 as inspiration here)

Or, you could make a campaign around both sides of the war using the scoundrels. Neither side would know that they are working for both sides. Eventually they might have to make a decision. Hope that helps ^_^

btw Yora, You have a really awesome avatar ^_^

Yora
2014-01-19, 07:21 AM
Not sure how well that would work.

But a completely different question: How about the issue of mixed Jedi-Nonjedi parties?

There is, to a certain degree, a solid reasoning behind "All Jedi, or no Jedi". However, I feel like that is more like avoiding the problem than actually solving it. Throughout Star Wars, we have Jedi and Nonjedi fighting alongside all the time, with the normal characters don't becoming spectators and still saving the day all the time. Instead of "Jedi are just always better by default", I believe it's more an issue of unbalanced game mechanics. If you go back to the original material (ep. 4-6), the powers of a Jedi are quite subtle: [spoilers for the movies only]
Obi-Wan uses the Mind Trick on Stormtroopers twice, once to let the speeder through and once to make two of them look in the other direction.
Luke and Vader use telekinesis on objects, but usually that's slowly lifting big things or throwing stuff that you could probably also throw with muscle power. This includes force choke.
Lightsabers almost certainly require the force so you don't decapitate yourself or slice everything in the room to pieces, and this also provides the precision needed to deflect blaster shots. Vader once throws his lightsaber, but that is at an unmoving target just 10 meters away. Yoda once uses his like a throwing knife at a much shorter distance and it then gets stuck in the first target (which itself is weird).
Then there is obviously hightened reflexes and the ability to make impressive jump, but in the movies those jumps are usually in the 4 to maybe 10 meter range. There is that rediculous chase scene early in Ep. 2, but even in that one most of the jumps are not that excessively long and after that it's mostly hanging on and not letting go until it's safe to let themselves drop. Anakin doing a precise jump some 200 meters down to land on a flying speeder at high speed stands out, but that's a single case ans the whole movie is stupid anyway. :smalltongue:
The Emperor uses Force Lightning, but he is supposed to very powerful and super-Dark Sided and he only uses it on a single defenseless enemy. Since it's a power completely different from anything else that is shown, I don't think it means that all Force Users have an instant super-powerful range attack at their hands.
Jedi also seem to be able to sense the presence of one another, but I don't believe there are any indications that Jedi can the presence of all living beings or droids at a distance.
Last there are a couple of premonitions, but these seem to be always directed at people very closely linked to the characters personal destiny. It doesn't allow to see the future.

It's games like Jedi Knight and The Force Unleashed that take these basic subtle powers and dial them up way beyond eleven. Ep. 1-3 also stay mostly within those limits, except for the finale of Ep 2, where the Jedi form a practically impenetrable wall of lightsabers against hundreds of rapid fire blasters fired at them. But even in that situation the story tells (but doesn't show), that the Jedi can't survive that fight. And in Ep 3, lots of Jedi are shown to die exactly that way.

I admit, some of it are interpretations that are most favorable to the point I want to make (Ep. 2 scenes and Force Lightning), but then the whole point of this exercise is to bring Jedi down to a level where they don't completely overshadow everyone else. It's not about finding the "true" extend of the powers of the Force, but about finding a way to make a playable RPG that is still not directly conflicting with the movies.

So let's look at some things that Jedi can't do, at least not by simply relying on the Force:
You probably can't use mind trick at targets that are out of sight. You still have to lie and bluff normally when using electronic communications. (Vader once force chokes a man at a distance, but it's on the same ship and Vader knows exactly where on the ship that man is currently standing.)
A ligthsaber can only improve your defense against blaster shots, but it doesn't make you invulnerable against them. Which in turn means, a Jedi in the party is not the only one who can threaten and kill an enemy Jedi.
Luke and Vader are both very good starfighter pilots, but that seems to be related to their Force abilities only through their heightened reflexes. The Force is shown in space combat only once, and in that case it appears to be giving a precise nudge at two torpedos that are flying at a regular speed in a straight line, to make a 90 degree turn at the precise moment. So space combat is pretty much a leveled playing field.
Jedi have no powers that help them using computers, which in that universe is a very important skill.
When shoting with blasters, having forced enhanced reflexes and perception is certainly a benefit, but Jedi are not usually portrayed as being great marksmen or sharpshoters. In ranged combat, they are not inherently better. And again, this is an important skill in Star Wars.

In short, Jedi excell in four areas: Melee combat, acrobatics, mind trick, and telekinesis. Which I think is fair. All characters should have a few things they are good at that the rest of the party can't do just as well.
A problem arises when the Force is added on top of character skill, instead of being part of the skill. For example, a scoundrel could have a proficiency with blasters rated at 7 and a Jedi a rating of 3, to which he gets a bonus of +2 because he has the Force to help his aim and reflexes. That still results in 7 for the scoundrel and 5 for the Jedi. The Jedi gets better than he would be without the Force, but that doesn't mean that without the Force, he would be equal to other characters in that field.
And that's a common problem with class based RPGs. A character level should not indicate how much training a character got, but how strong he is compared to other characters. Your party does not have to consists of one of the galaxies best marksmen and one of the galaxies strongest Jedi. You can very well have one of the best marksmen and a not terribly experienced Jedi fighting side by side. (Take for example the KotOR comics, where you have two absolute Badass warriors traveling with an abslutely crappy Jedi, who can barely keep up with them.) If Jedi outshine the non-jedi characters on a regular basis in a wide range of fields, then this is because the game system gives a Jedi character too much abilities per level.

I am quite fond of Saga Edition, which is the best d20 game ever made, but it's still a d20 game with all the problems that implies. For future games, my system of choice is Fate, which is a much more narratively driven game in which all characters have basically the same amount of bonuses, but players can freely chose to what things these bonuses apply. When playing a Star Wars game in Fate, I think it's only important to consider carefully how broad or narrow a specific ability or skill is defined. For example, a skill "Lightsaber combat" should probably not be applicable to throwing your lightsaber as a ranged weapon, since other characters have to increase both the Melee combat and ranged combat skills to do the same things with their regular weapons.
So I think that it isn't true that you always have to have an All-Jedi or No-Jedi game. You just have to make sure that the Force does not become a Carte Blanche to succeed at everything.

NickChaisson
2014-01-19, 08:29 AM
Thats a pretty good analysis of it. I think as long as the GM and players work together, any type of setting is possible ^_^

A system for star war that I'm fond of is the West end one. Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Roleplaying_Game_(West_End_Games))i s the wiki page for it.

Spoony also has a few episodes related to Star Wars rpg if your interested. They can be found Here (http://spoonyexperiment.com/counter-monkey/)

Hope any of that was interesting/useful. Best of luck with your game ^_^

Yora
2014-01-19, 09:19 AM
In just rewatched that Spoony video, and the point he makes is actually a different one. But also a (seemingly) good one.

The one I was thinking about was the Jedi Hunter video, which is about a single nonjedi character in an otherwise all-Jedi party. Which goes in a similar direction as I did.

The All-Jedi or No-Jedi one is actually about Jedi characters hogging the spotlight. And that's where I fundamentally disagree with him and would *gasp* call him out for poor GMing. What he says is basically, that in a confrontation between Jedi and Sith, nonjedi characters have to stand back and watch them dueling, because that's a convention of the setting. And even further, Jedi characters are supposed to be the ones to save the day and defeat the big villains. Not some scruffy nerf herders.
And that's just wrong. Yes, in the movies it's all about Jedi doing almost everything. But the movies are not a story about the Empire. The movies are the story of Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, with Obi-Wan and the Emepror as secondary leads. They all just happen to be Jedi. But the movies are not about defeating the Empire. The movies are about Vaders fall to the Dark Side and redemption. And in that story, all the players are Jedi. As Yoda says, which is actually quite corny, Luke has to fight Vader because it's his destiny. Because the movies aknowledge that they are a movie. Luke has to face Vader alone and Vader has to defeat the Emperor, because dramatic conventions demand it.

But take a look at the whole story from the outside: A politician stages an insurrection to bring himself at the head of the Republic and overturn the democratic constituation in his favor. Through clever maneuvering he gets full executive power with a military that is entirely loyal to him as a person, rather than to the public instituations. He also successfully gains an ally in the only para-military law-enforcement agency that could stop him by acting outside the regular law, who then provides some minor assistance to the military in purging that organization. After the senate extends his special previleges indefinately, a small group of politicans starts a conspiracy to overthrow him and over the following decades creates an underground army to launch a full-scale rebellion. However, overconfident about the military power under his command, he uses himself as bait in a trap to crush the rebell forces and severely underestimates the abilities of the rebell commando unit assaulting the shield generator. (Even without the Ewoks the commandos were already setting up charges. If just one rebell had chosen to detonate the bomb he had in his hand, it could still have disabled the shield.) With the shield down, the rebell fleet successfully destroyed the Death Star while the emeperor and his second in command where still onboard. (Might possibly have made it to an escape shuttle like Luke did if they hadn't punched each other out minutes before, but could still have been shot down before they made it to hyperspace.) In the EU, this lead to a power vacuum at the head of the empire, which in turn resulted in the same thing that always happens at the death of any great conqueror who didn't take steps to ensure a stable transition of power to a successor. The second tier leadership fractured into different factions that control different parts of the Empire, who are as often at war with each other as with the Alliance/New Republic.

In the historic perspective on these events, the Jedi play almost no role at all. And what little impact they actually have was as a para-military organization that had to be purged before the final takeover. It's not like the very same thing couldn't have happened to some other non-jedi organization of elite forces.

So in closing, nothing in the setting really demands that stories end in a duel between Force Users, which decides the outcome of everything. Vader and the Emperor are important to the fall of the empire, but not because they were Sith Lords, but because they were the supreme political leader and the head of all armed forces. In the EU there are also Darth Revan and Darth Kryat who are of similar importance, but I think they are both among the most terrible ideas that ever appeared in Star Wars (and I am actually an even bigger KotOR fan than a Star Wars fan(.

CombatOwl
2014-01-19, 07:36 PM
Not sure how well that would work.

But a completely different question: How about the issue of mixed Jedi-Nonjedi parties?

There is, to a certain degree, a solid reasoning behind "All Jedi, or no Jedi".

It's only an issue if you're light-handed with the morality. If you let people play Jedi in a mixed party, you need to force restraint onto them by being liberal with the dark side points. You should not let a light side Jedi character be played like a non-force-sensitive--they cannot be as quick to fight, or as impatient as others. If they resolve their issues with violence, hand them dark side points. If they cheat or defraud people in order to get more loot, hand them dark side points. If they focus on greed and material acquisition over helping the people around them, give them dark side points. And if they become a Dark character, take the sheet away and let them try again. One of the best ways to balance Jedi characters is to give everyone else more freedom to act and more Cool New Toys that the Jedi ought to take a pass on. Put the party in situations where the non Jedi have to be the ones to do the right thing, because the Jedi would otherwise be too bound by the dictates of the force to get the job done. Require Jedi characters to be inflexible (else gain dark side points), and present a story that at times requires moral flexibility.

Another more subtle way is to crank up the relative performance of non-force skills. If the people who don't use the force can get more mileage out of their well-developed mundane skills than the Jedi can out of their use-the-force-instead-of-skill approach, that's a lot of role protection for the non Jedi in the party. Letting the mundane folks get more out of Persuasion than Jedi get out of mind tricks may on the surface seem like a **** move, but in practice it's actually just preserving a role for a non-jedi negotiator.

You don't have to rewrite the rulebook on how force powers work to make the above changes--which do actually solve the problem. But prepare to get a lot of complaints if your party has a power gamer who picked Jedi because they thought it could do everything without a price.


I am quite fond of Saga Edition, which is the best d20 game ever made, but it's still a d20 game with all the problems that implies. For future games, my system of choice is Fate, which is a much more narratively driven game in which all characters have basically the same amount of bonuses, but players can freely chose to what things these bonuses apply. When playing a Star Wars game in Fate, I think it's only important to consider carefully how broad or narrow a specific ability or skill is defined. For example, a skill "Lightsaber combat" should probably not be applicable to throwing your lightsaber as a ranged weapon, since other characters have to increase both the Melee combat and ranged combat skills to do the same things with their regular weapons.
So I think that it isn't true that you always have to have an All-Jedi or No-Jedi game. You just have to make sure that the Force does not become a Carte Blanche to succeed at everything.

Fate is pretty much the default go-to system for any setting built upon a movie or television franchise. It is pretty much a perfect match to the sort of storytelling that dominates movies and television.

Raimun
2014-01-19, 10:32 PM
So in closing, nothing in the setting really demands that stories end in a duel between Force Users, which decides the outcome of everything. Vader and the Emperor are important to the fall of the empire, but not because they were Sith Lords, but because they were the supreme political leader and the head of all armed forces. In the EU there are also Darth Revan and Darth Kryat who are of similar importance, but I think they are both among the most terrible ideas that ever appeared in Star Wars (and I am actually an even bigger KotOR fan than a Star Wars fan(.

As we all know, the pen is mightier than the sword. However, if you have both, you're pretty damn powerful.

One thing to note is that most of the greatest movers and shakers in Star Wars have been force users. This is because they possess raw personal power in addition to political power. Force helps them in subtle but concrete ways and gives them a real edge over those that don't possess the power. How people use that power has always been integral to most Star Wars-stories, as has been the classic tale of battle between good and evil.

The force doesn't give jedi and sith just "l33t fight skillz" but also, for example, ways to divine and even control the thoughts of others. Can you imagine the power of a politician that can read minds? Just look at emperor Palpatine.

In addition to that the reflexes and foresight allow politicians such as Palpatine to avoid assassination attempts and physical accidents more easily... not to mention the intimidation factor. Would any average joe want to even try their luck against Vader in the first place? Cross his way? In anyway? What if he finds out?

The fighting skills are not to be scoffed at, either. Vader wasn't the dreaded one just because he had some armies at his command. No matter who you were, he might hunt you down personally and kill you with his own hands. Literally. So who in their right mind would cause too much commotion?

What all this means is that political manuevering is that much more easier for guys like Palpatine, Dooku and Vader. I mean, do you really think 80+ years old dude and a third degree burn victim with missing limbs would be able to rule the galactic empire in star wars universe sans force? If someone read in-universe the history of star wars, they might ask why were those people able to hold so much political power. They would be told that because they had the dark side of the force on their side.

On the good guy-side, the force powers have always managed to turn the tables when normal guys thought the situation was impossible. The greatest example is the destruction of the first death star by some farmer dude who had never actually flown a military fighter jet.

However, the biggest thing is that in the grand scheme of things Star Wars is about the evil will manifested that wants to destroy and dominate everything and the good opposing force that wants to restore peace. Lightsaber duels are where the politics of the setting culminate.

What I'm saying is that I can't think of anything more defining to Star Wars than the force.

Edit: I'm not saying force and the jedi is all there is to Star Wars. It's just the biggest thing of the setting. They weren't thinking about game balance when they made the movies and wrote the stories.

GungHo
2014-01-20, 01:49 PM
I guess a complication would be that you can't really say you are running a "Scoundrel Campaign" and then expect the PCs to be all like Han and Lando and then try to do the right thing once they get dragged into a situation they never wanted anything to do with.
The option to simply take the cash and walk away is always present.
Or to simply decide "Dead or Alive" translates to "Dead means less whining and no escape attempts" in a Bounty Hunter campaign.

Yora
2014-01-20, 02:03 PM
What examples do we really have about scoundrels doing scoundrel things on their own?
We have Han and Lando, but they practically join the Rebellion shortly after they first appear.
The new KotOR comic series is pretty much a scoundrel story, but it's still about the outlaw characters helping their Jedi friend with his Jedi business.
Booster Terrik is basically working as a private contractor for the Republic.
And I don't remember exactly what Talon Karrde and his crew were doing, but they also ended up in a fght between the Republic and the Empire, assisting both sides at different times.
While I imagine a campaign in which the PCs get tangled up in something like Karrde did and are trying to make it out at the end with a profit or at the very least still alive, it's still a story about the Rebellion.

The world of the scoundrels is a very interesting and colorful one, but there aren't really that much stories about them that don't serve as sidetracks for a Rebellion or Jedi story.

RandomLunatic
2014-01-20, 04:51 PM
What examples do we really have about scoundrels doing scoundrel things on their own?
We have Han and Lando, but they practically join the Rebellion shortly after they first appear.
The new KotOR comic series is pretty much a scoundrel story, but it's still about the outlaw characters helping their Jedi friend with his Jedi business.
Booster Terrik is basically working as a private contractor for the Republic.
And I don't remember exactly what Talon Karrde and his crew were doing, but they also ended up in a fght between the Republic and the Empire, assisting both sides at different times.
While I imagine a campaign in which the PCs get tangled up in something like Karrde did and are trying to make it out at the end with a profit or at the very least still alive, it's still a story about the Rebellion.

The world of the scoundrels is a very interesting and colorful one, but there aren't really that much stories about them that don't serve as sidetracks for a Rebellion or Jedi story.

In the movies? Not much.

In the EU? Oh yeah.

Brain Daley's Han Solo Adventures and Lando Calrissian Adventures center on the title characters doing scoundrel things. Ditto A.C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy, which largely serves to chronicle Solo's smuggling career. K.W. Jeter's The Bounty Hunter Wars trilogy is three books of bounty hunters and gangsters trying to kill each other. (It is better than I made it sound, really. They are the books that made me like Boba Fett.)

There are probably more, but those are the ones I have.

KoboldCleric
2014-01-20, 09:02 PM
What you have to keep in mind about the Star Wars universe is that it's massive--but you can make it as small as you like. To see the entire Republic Era as a battle between the Jedi and the Sith would be like looking at the first half of the 20th Century and seeing only the two World Wars. Sure, in both cases you're looking at an extremely significant portion of history during that time, but there are plenty of other stories to tell in which that is only the background noise (or in some places, perhaps entirely unheard of).

My group's current campaign is SWd20. It's our fourth SW campaign since SWd20 was released. The first was classic rebellion, the second was rebellion-era with the PCs on the side of the Empire, and the current one is set in the Sith Empire at the height of their Golden Age. The third, I think is the most relevant to your situation: it took place entirely in the Tapini Sector, focusing heavily on the political and economic feuding among the twelve houses. There are plenty of opportunities for a Scoundrel or a Noble to thrive in that climate. We liberated assets from rival houses; we played our enemies against one another; we "attended" social functions and spent quite a bit of time frequenting Tapini's own Las Vegas. Honestly, there were moments when I caught myself thinking that some Shadowrun games I'd played weren't as strategically and tactically tense.

As far as mixed parties go, I've found it works fine. I can't speak to the balance in Saga specifically, of course, but SWd20 only needed a few tweaks (a few of which were fixed in the errata anyway). If you find your players constantly deferring to the force wielder (or you as the GM lean too heavily upon them to direct the story) then that's a player issue, not one with the system. It might be something to bring up during character creation.

Have fun Yora.