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View Full Version : DM Help Can You Have an Epic Duel in a Tabletop Game?



Lord Lemming
2017-12-23, 08:33 PM
I'm designing a homebrew Star Wars RPG system and coming up with potential campaigns for it. There's a little nagging problem (well, one of many) at the back of mind, though: Some of the most iconic moments of any Star Wars movie, game, book or comic is The Duel, where the hero faces off against their dark rival in an epic showdown. This is the kind of thing you expect from Star Wars, and is probably the kind of thing that any given player could appreciate being in. The thing is, these duels are typically very personal, with two, three, or at most four combatants involved. How do you set up a duel for one or two players to be involved in without making the rest of the group unutterably bored for the duration?

Koo Rehtorb
2017-12-23, 08:38 PM
Different simultaneous scenes. While one person is dueling the boss, another person is holding off waves of stormtroopers, another one is piloting an x-wing, and so on. Switch rapidly back and forth between each of them.

Altair_the_Vexed
2017-12-24, 06:45 AM
Different simultaneous scenes. While one person is dueling the boss, another person is holding off waves of stormtroopers, another one is piloting an x-wing, and so on. Switch rapidly back and forth between each of them.

That's exactly how I did it - space battle, ground forces of commandos, and a Jedi-Sith duel, all running at the same time. I cut between each fight every couple of rounds, used multiple tables for minis to keep track of the action, and made sure each fight would have an impact on the others: shield generators to take out on the ground to let the air-support in, that sort of thing. Playing the epic fight music from the various Star Wars films helps a lot!

It kept me very entertained, running it, and I seem to recall the players enjoyed it too. We even put a bunch of fireworks inside the mini set I'd built (out of roughly painted up cardboard, nothing expensive!) and blew it to bits in the garden afterwards.

NorthernPhoenix
2017-12-24, 08:20 AM
That's exactly how I did it - space battle, ground forces of commandos, and a Jedi-Sith duel, all running at the same time. .

That's basically Phantom Menace ;)

Lord Lemming
2017-12-24, 12:38 PM
It kept me very entertained, running it, and I seem to recall the players enjoyed it too. We even put a bunch of fireworks inside the mini set I'd built (out of roughly painted up cardboard, nothing expensive!) and blew it to bits in the garden afterwards.

That sounds like something I might have to do! :smallbiggrin:

Anxe
2017-12-24, 03:05 PM
That's basically Phantom Menace ;)

It's basically every movie except New Hope.