Bouncing some ideas for a Star Wars campaign

[Yora]

Any time I look at old Star Wars RPG books to get idea for a space game, I always get thinking that I'd really love to run another Star Wars campaign as well.
One big problem that I encountered with previous campaign ideas is that the perspectives and possible interaction of new 0-experience characters are so very different from the adventures we see in the movies and other main stories of the Expanded Universe. As background extra #274, you're not going to experience the Star Wars setting like Luke having lightsaber fights with Darth Vader, or killing Jabba and blowing up his sail barge with everyone on it.

The answer is already in the question: Have the players play major heroes who come face to face with the big player NPCs of the Empire and complete change the Rebellion against the Empire. Han and Lando are quite clearly famous with big reputations among the scoundrels of the galaxy when we first meet them and Leia is an imperial senator. Only Luke starts as a no-name farmboy in his first adventure, but right in the next one he's now a commander in the Rebel Aliance and the son of Darth Vader. Let the players start playing the campaign with characters of this caliber.

Here's a couple early ideas I've head and just wanted to see what other people think of it:

Characters who are already someone important need a bit of backstory so the players have something to fill out the role with. But I don't like the idea of playing short adventures with only 1 or 2 players each before the party comes together and first thought about having the other players play supporting NPCs in those adventures. But it's certainly possible that players find one of these NPCs much more interesting and fun during play than the characters they created as their PCs. And there really is no reason to not let them switch at this point. So my idea for the start of the campaign is to have three separate aventures with different characters that all end up in the same place. For each adventure there will be pregen characters if the players don't think that background is something they are not interested in for their PCs, but they are always free to make up a custom one that fits the party of that adventure if they want to.
The first adventure is about some freighter pilots who are given a job to deliver some crates, which turn out to be weapons for the Rebellion and cause them an entanglement with the Empire and the Rebels revealing themselves as such. (Pilots, engineers, smugglers, gamblers, mercenaries.)
The second adventure is about the personal staff of a senator on Coruscant who are told by their boss to immediately get off the planet and go into hiding. He's probably going to be arrested and then never to be seen again in the next few hours, now that the Senate has been dissolved. But maybe if the Empire gets him, they might not bother to go chasing after his whole office staff. They get to make it to a ship to take them to the Outer Rim, and are told to try getting into contact with a friend of the senator who has connections with the Rebellion and might be able to help them getting into hiding. (Nobles, officials, guards.)
The third adventure is about a hidden Jedi who has secretly trained to kids he found and tought them everything he learned before his master was killed by Vader. Now that the Senate is dissolved and Alderaan destroyed, and the Rebels are getting much bolder and attacking the Empire with greater forces, he decides it is time to come out of hiding and offer his abilities to the Rebellion. They take a small ship with some friends who also want to become Rebel soldiers and go to a planet where they hope to find a Rebel agent who can get them into contact with a rebel base.

After these three adventures, the players will have seen a number of planets and met a whole bunch of NPCs, which then can all make further appearances later throughout the campaign. It also helps with giving a range of different perspectives on the conflict that the campaign centers around. Since all three adventures will end at the same Rebel base, the imperial forces encountered in each of them can be from the same imperial fleet under the command of the same admiral. Which should work quite well to establish him as the big villain, even with the players only seeing the story from the perspective of the heroes. (I really don't like monologing cutscenes in RPGs.) The Rebells will then have a favor to ask of the newcomers, but it's something that requires only three to five people, all 15 of them would get way too crowded to stay secret. So then each player picks one of their three characters who will join this new party. If all players want to pick their characters from the same adventure, that's also perfectly fine. The other two adventures will still have played their part in establishing the setting for that particular campaign, introducing NPCs, and providing practice with the rules.

For the main campaign, I think the best compromise is to establish a villain with a villainous plan which the players have to agree to try to stop as the focus of the campaign. So it's not completely wander off and do whatever you feel like. But within that framing, the players can have the freedom to investigate the villains plan and come up with ways to disrupt it in whichever way they feel like. To make it not too difficulty, the campaign preparting should include a number of NPC informants that have all the information that the players might need to create a plan to defeat the villain. There should also be ways that the players can reach these informant, but getting to them doesn't have to be easy. Knowing an NPC who has important information is one thing. Getting him out of an imperial prision and convincing him to help is a completely different story, but one that would be relatively easy for player to solve with their own creativity and improvisation.

Here things get pretty vague now for me. My idea for the main villain is an Imperial Grand Admiral who is in charge of the fleets stationed in the region of Ord Mantell and Ithor. He's in charge with finding and destroying any Rebel forces in the area. Secondary antagonists are an Imperial Intelligence colonel in charge of investigating rebel reports, a vice admiral commanding a Star Destroyer that somehow keeps showing up in the same places as the heroes several times, and a regional boss of the Black Sun who has some arrangements with the Empire but also no interest in obeying the law.
For Episode 1, so to speak, my idea is that the PCs have to make contact with an engineer from one of the many big shipyards, who has noticed that the giant imperial shipyards at Kuat have been ordering custom components that are just like upscaled Star Destroyer parts with greatly increased energy capacity. Since the Kuat shipyards should be able to make these parts themselves, he thinks they need them in much larger numbers than their own capacities to buy more of them from other companies. And that would mean the Empire is something absolutely massive. When the PCs learn that the grand admiral is going to Kuat himself to get a new command ship, they also have to go there and discover the launch of one of the first Super Star Destroyers! (dun dun dun!)
Then Episode 2 is something something the Super Star Destroyer wiping out the Rebel Base and leading the hunt for any Rebel fleets in the area.
Episode 3 is finding a way to destroy the Super Star Destroyer and allow the scattered Rebel fleet to come out of hiding and resume taking the fight to the Empire.

Well, that's just some ideas I have for a potential campaign.

[Corsair14]

I ran a campaign in the time covid was actually a real issue. I started them as crew/passengers on a transport with a rebel sympathizer captain who was contracted to retrieve the commandoes at the Battle of Scariff. Mostly this was a theme park adventure that was to familiarize them with how the rules system works and show how they ended up with an knew some rebel contacts. I ended up having the captain killed when the control board in front of him exploded thus giving the PCs more control. Then I had a time jump and they were down to the last few credits on some rim system station and this was where the real adventure began.

Campaign ran fine. They missed things now and then. The jedi got to be super powerful, which is the main flaw in the d6 system but all the other characters worked well. But I definitely see where you are coming from comparing a PC party vs the main movie characters and how their adventures differ. The jedi character(who was a veteran from our campaigns in the 90s) actually made note of this during the game and said it was pretty normal for PCs to be the B-team when the rebels needed something done but it wasnt important enough to send in the A-team.

I would recommend not letting jedi be played. They can quickly go from padawans to badasses plus unless you want to run adventures away from the rest of the party, quite often their goals will be different from the party's goals as they try to acquire new powers and due to the power of force powers, the competition that a jedi needs will be overpowered if they end up fighting the rest of the party.

[Yora]

I would recommend not letting jedi be played. They can quickly go from padawans to badasses plus unless you want to run adventures away from the rest of the party, quite often their goals will be different from the party's goals as they try to acquire new powers and due to the power of force powers, the competition that a jedi needs will be overpowered if they end up fighting the rest of the party.

So you are recommending not letting Jedi characters run off to come back with new powers?

And what game system are you talking about?

I ran a campaign in the time covid was actually a real issue.

How does this relate to the topic at hand?

[LibraryOgre]

A suggestion from an old mobile game, Star Wars: Uprising:

In the immediate aftermath of Endor, the section of the Imperial navy in charge of the Anoat Sector (including Anoat, Hoth, and Bespin, plus a few new planets) locked everything down... no communications, limited transit within the sector, etc. You have a loose alliance of merchants, criminals, and rebels who work to disrupt the Iron Blockade.

[Cikomyr2]

I say you dissociate entirely the trappings of Star Wars from the established story and setting.

Bring Star Wars back to its bases:

- there is an autoritarian galactic government with some bad dangerous dudes at the top. Default name is the Empire. This government is opposed by underdogs resistants, maybe even remnants of the previous democratic government.
- the Empire is happy to let local crime lords establish control over the frontier, because if the Empire shows up to bully locals these dont protest.
- there is an ancient order of spiritual monk-knights who either were actively hunted down by the Empire, or merely slowly went extinct with a handfil of survivors.

There, you have the trifecta of Star Wars:
- war stories with Empire v Rebels
- crime stories
- Spiritual stories

Add your own twists to your liking. But as long as the above 3 is true in your setting, it will be "Star Wars" and you can have any stories you want.

You can decide your campaign happens in an undisclosed time period of Galactic history, past or future. Or maybe your campaign happens in a remote part of the galaxy where the Republic is not present and an Empire has risen and hunted down all Jedi locally.

Anything you want. As long as you have the Empire, the Scum and the near-extinct Jedi.

[Corsair14]

Basically saying it was a recent campaign we played since it was easy to play over phone chat when no one wanted to be face to face.

We played West End Games Star Wars using the REUP rule book, so no the jedi didnt go off and learn abilities, they kind of taught themselves using holocrons since there were no real masters left at that time. But jedi quickly eclipsed non-force using characters very quickly. The campaign took place in between ESB and ROTJ when the empire was at its height.

Another adventure we did with a guest dm was infiltrating a Hutt's palace during a big party to recover a prisoner

What system are you using?

[Yora]

I am not that far into planning yet.

[Easy e]

The three outlines you lay-out seem cool, and I would play them all.

However, I am hesitant for players to make so many characters for what is essentially 1-shots and then decide on the one they like going forward. Seems like a lot of overhead without a huge pay-off.

How do your players feel about it?

[Yora]

That's what pregens are for.

No players until there is a campaign to pitch.

[Black Jester]

I would probably run these introduction adventures you describe with the full group, but as deliberately lethal gauntlet adventures, generating the final group for the effective campagin out of the few survivors. That way, you establish the idea of a lethal, serious game early on, without forcing you to pull that trigger again during the real campaign but still giving your players the impression of a constant life- and-death situation and that they need to be attentive, resourceful and most importantly working together as a team if they don't want to die again; and you can show directly how dangerous and vicious their opposition truly is.

When it comes to the Star Wars RPGs, each of the game neatly fits into one of the three trilogies and their mood and aesthetics: The old West End Game is rustic, charming, and very closely intertwined with the original Star Wars trilogy; the D20 stuff (including Saga) is mirroring the prequels, and the FFG stuff feels as original and exciting as the sequels.

[Corsair14]

When it comes to the Star Wars RPGs, each of the game neatly fits into one of the three trilogies and their mood and aesthetics: The old West End Game is rustic, charming, and very closely intertwined with the original Star Wars trilogy; the D20 stuff (including Saga) is mirroring the prequels, and the FFG stuff feels as original and exciting as the sequels.

I see what you did there and I approve :P

[Yora]

There's a thing that I always find difficult with classic Star Wars as a setting for new original protagonists. What do you do with the Force?
I really like how the movies make it quite clear that we seem to be seeing everyone who's left of the Jedi. Tarkin says to Vader about Obi-Wan "You and he are all that's ledt of your ancient religion". And Obi-Wan says to Yoda about Luke "He's our only hope". Both Han and the admiral on the Death Star clearly don't believe that the Force is real. And later in the Thrawn books, the reveal of a crazy old Jedi on Jormak is quite a big deal, as he's the first other Jedi Luke ever met at that point. Even though he's clearly shofted towards the Dark Side, Luke still hopes to learn from him at first.

With setup, there really is no Jedi stuff outside of Luke's story. It's of course always an option to not have the Jedi being part of a campaign at all, but I feel then something major of Star Wars is missing.
As I outlined above, I think the idea that a young Jedi student might have survived in hiding for 20 years and now starts to teach someone else everything he knows about the Force can work. If he doesn't know any more than what Obi-Wan and Yoda taught Luke, it's not really conflicting with Luke's story.
But if you have one or two Jedi PCs and all they do is normal smuggler and rebel stuff, except with lightsabers and force push, that doesn't add much of a magical element to the campaign.

Any idea how this could be approached without introducing a bunch of unknown Vader's apprentices and holocron fetch quests?

[LibraryOgre]

Any idea how this could be approached without introducing a bunch of unknown Vader's apprentices and holocron fetch quests?

Something a friend of mine suggested when we were talking about Star Wars:

Your own personal Force Ghost.

He's got some sort of connection to you, or you to him, and so you can communicate, though he's not always there. It provides a justification for your Jedi to learn and grow independently, but also results in them seeming kind of crazy, as they talk to a dead jedi no one else can see... but learn useful things from it.

[Thrudd]

There's a thing that I always find difficult with classic Star Wars as a setting for new original protagonists. What do you do with the Force?
I really like how the movies make it quite clear that we seem to be seeing everyone who's left of the Jedi. Tarkin says to Vader about Obi-Wan "You and he are all that's ledt of your ancient religion". And Obi-Wan says to Yoda about Luke "He's our only hope". Both Han and the admiral on the Death Star clearly don't believe that the Force is real. And later in the Thrawn books, the reveal of a crazy old Jedi on Jormak is quite a big deal, as he's the first other Jedi Luke ever met at that point. Even though he's clearly shofted towards the Dark Side, Luke still hopes to learn from him at first.

With setup, there really is no Jedi stuff outside of Luke's story. It's of course always an option to not have the Jedi being part of a campaign at all, but I feel then something major of Star Wars is missing.
As I outlined above, I think the idea that a young Jedi student might have survived in hiding for 20 years and now starts to teach someone else everything he knows about the Force can work. If he doesn't know any more than what Obi-Wan and Yoda taught Luke, it's not really conflicting with Luke's story.
But if you have one or two Jedi PCs and all they do is normal smuggler and rebel stuff, except with lightsabers and force push, that doesn't add much of a magical element to the campaign.

Any idea how this could be approached without introducing a bunch of unknown Vader's apprentices and holocron fetch quests?

It's tough, because including a lot of Jedi stuff means the rest of the characters have to put the group's concerns aside to follow the Jedi around, or constantly split the party. Unless the whole party are force sensitives looking for Jedi stuff, I find that's it's best to keep the magical stuff down to a minimum. IMO, it's fine for the campaign to focus mainly on one element of the setting- in the Rebellion era it makes sense that it would be rebel or smuggler stuff. The force-sensitive PC should expect very limited access to jedi training in this period - perhaps they will only have the opportunity to learn one or two new skills throughout the duration of the campaign. If the campaign extends beyond the fall of the empire, they will then hear about Luke and be able to seek him out, maybe join his new academy.

[Mechalich]

There's a thing that I always find difficult with classic Star Wars as a setting for new original protagonists. What do you do with the Force?
I really like how the movies make it quite clear that we seem to be seeing everyone who's left of the Jedi. Tarkin says to Vader about Obi-Wan "You and he are all that's ledt of your ancient religion". And Obi-Wan says to Yoda about Luke "He's our only hope". Both Han and the admiral on the Death Star clearly don't believe that the Force is real. And later in the Thrawn books, the reveal of a crazy old Jedi on Jormak is quite a big deal, as he's the first other Jedi Luke ever met at that point. Even though he's clearly shofted towards the Dark Side, Luke still hopes to learn from him at first.

With setup, there really is no Jedi stuff outside of Luke's story. It's of course always an option to not have the Jedi being part of a campaign at all, but I feel then something major of Star Wars is missing.
As I outlined above, I think the idea that a young Jedi student might have survived in hiding for 20 years and now starts to teach someone else everything he knows about the Force can work. If he doesn't know any more than what Obi-Wan and Yoda taught Luke, it's not really conflicting with Luke's story.
But if you have one or two Jedi PCs and all they do is normal smuggler and rebel stuff, except with lightsabers and force push, that doesn't add much of a magical element to the campaign.

Any idea how this could be approached without introducing a bunch of unknown Vader's apprentices and holocron fetch quests?

One thing you can try it to embrace the Jedi Service Corps. Immediately prior to the outbreak of the Clone Wars, arguably the majority of adult Jedi were not Knights or Masters but in fact members of one of the four Service Corps, having failed to pass either the Initiate or Knighthood Trials. While members of the Service Corps were less capable of defending themselves than Knights (though at least some did carry lightsabers, probably those who had become Padawans but not subsequently Knights), they were numerous, widely dispersed, and significantly less likely than Knights to be in the immediate proximity of Clones when Order 66 was issued. So there probably were survivors.

The useful part about the Service Corps is not only can they teach the Force to a prospect Jedi in a way familiar to only casual Star Wars fans it is that they have different priorities than the Knights and Masters. Luke's task is to overthrow the Emperor, but a student trained by an Agricultural Corps member might acquire a quest to prevent a galactic famine, a Medical Corps member to stop a bioweapon or plague, an Explorer Corps member to prevent the Empire from discovering a vulnerable civilization, and an Educational Corps member halting the ongoing corruption spread by COMPNOR.

Star Wars stories during the Imperial Era are usually about 'we need to stop horrible thing X that Imperial BBEG Y is attempting.' Traditional Jedi are very good at handling plots where thing X is something that can be blown up, stabbed, or otherwise directly confronted. Characters drawn from the Service Corps side of the tradition can actually work better when it comes to threats that can't be confronted quite that directly.

[Yora]

Something a friend of mine suggested when we were talking about Star Wars:

Your own personal Force Ghost.

He's got some sort of connection to you, or you to him, and so you can communicate, though he's not always there. It provides a justification for your Jedi to learn and grow independently, but also results in them seeming kind of crazy, as they talk to a dead jedi no one else can see... but learn useful things from it.

That actually sounds like a great idea. I'm not a fan of hordes of force ghosts appearing everywhere, but a second one somewhere in the galaxy wouldn't hurt thing. The PCs could hear stories about a Jedi who had been hiding on a remote planet for 10 years before he was found and killed by Vader and go there to investigate, where a Jedi in the party could have the ghost appear to give some pointers.

Or the villain of the campaign could have played a major role in the Jedi's death. The PCs hear about it, investigate where the Jedi died, and encounter the ghost who can provide hints on fighting the villain.

[LibraryOgre]

That actually sounds like a great idea. I'm not a fan of hordes of force ghosts appearing everywhere, but a second one somewhere in the galaxy wouldn't hurt thing. The PCs could hear stories about a Jedi who had been hiding on a remote planet for 10 years before he was found and killed by Vader and go there to investigate, where a Jedi in the party could have the ghost appear to give some pointers.

Or the villain of the campaign could have played a major role in the Jedi's death. The PCs hear about it, investigate where the Jedi died, and encounter the ghost who can provide hints on fighting the villain.

Or a personal connection to the new Jedi. What if the new Jedi is the child of the Force Ghost? In the Rebellion timeline, we KNOW that Order 66 happened just in time for young adults of the Rebellion to be children of a Jedi. Kid is born on the down-low, parent gets 66'd, and parent sticks around... first just guiding the kid, but when they grow up and prove sensitive, they're around enough to impart lessons, especially in Control and Sense.

[Thrudd]

Or a personal connection to the new Jedi. What if the new Jedi is the child of the Force Ghost? In the Rebellion timeline, we KNOW that Order 66 happened just in time for young adults of the Rebellion to be children of a Jedi. Kid is born on the down-low, parent gets 66'd, and parent sticks around... first just guiding the kid, but when they grow up and prove sensitive, they're around enough to impart lessons, especially in Control and Sense.

Doesn't even have to be related...A Jedi encountered the force sensitive PC as a child on a planet somewhere during an assignment and made a brief connection with them, then gets 66'ed. We know that a relatively brief personal connection and a little force sensitivity is all it takes for a spirit to be able to reach you, that's Luke's situation with Ben.

[Mutazoia]

My Star Wars campaign was set LONG before the movies. The campaign was set in the glory days of the old Republic (this was, of course, before KOTOR was a thing and we were running D6 rules) and took place during the first Sith war. At the start of the campaign, Sith were unheard of. This allowed the PCs to be the epic heroes of the story without having to worry about messing with established canon (Even the EU was pretty thin in those days).

So basically if you just pick a different era to have your campaign in, you don't have to worry about your players being background character #247.

[LibraryOgre]

So basically if you just pick a different era to have your campaign in, you don't have to worry about your players being background character #247.

But I *want* to be the guy fleeing Bespin with his ice cream maker!

[thorr-kan]

But I *want* to be the guy fleeing Bespin with his ice cream maker!

Also valid. Somebody had the food concession on the new Death Star to give the Bothans that info. Be interesting to see how he got there.

[Thrudd]

Ah, the "Tag and Bink are Dead" campaign. That actually could be a lot of fun, if everyone's in the right mood.

[Duff]

However, I am hesitant for players to make so many characters for what is essentially 1-shots and then decide on the one they like going forward. Seems like a lot of overhead without a huge pay-off.

How do your players feel about it?

The pool of characters that survive the "prequal" arcs aren't necessarily finished. If the game has a bit of lethality, those are your pool of replacement characters. Not someone we just met, this is "the guy Jill escaped Corescant with".
While you would often want to tail off the lethality as the game goes on, as Black Jester suggested, a bodycount early establishes the stakes

[Mutazoia]

But I *want* to be the guy fleeing Bespin with his ice cream maker!

[Misereor]

Ah, the "Tag and Bink are Dead" campaign. That actually could be a lot of fun, if everyone's in the right mood.

Manuel (aka "Manny") Bothanz died to get us these plans...

[Rakaydos]

When it comes to the Star Wars RPGs, each of the game neatly fits into one of the three trilogies and their mood and aesthetics: The old West End Game is rustic, charming, and very closely intertwined with the original Star Wars trilogy; the D20 stuff (including Saga) is mirroring the prequels, and the FFG stuff feels as original and exciting as the sequels.

How dare you attack my preferred edition that way!

[Black Jester]

How dare you attack my preferred edition that way!

I fear you have to be more specific. Which edition did I attack so brutally to cause your rage (and be wary, young padawan - rage leads to the dark side).

[Cikomyr2]

I fear you have to be more specific. Which edition did I attack so brutally to cause your rage (and be wary, young padawan - rage leads to the dark side).

I liked the FFG as the basis of free form storytelling.

[Black Jester]

If you enjoy it, thant it is a good system for you. It is genuinely great that you have a game that you enjoy, even if I don't.
However, I think that the concept of publishing whole new, full-priced corebooks for each sub-setting of the game to be a rather unleasant sales strategy that deserve some mockery. And on a personal level, I just don't like the colourful picture dice. They seem rather gimmicky to me, without adding much to the game which wouldn't require to buy even more stuff to properly play the game.

I like the old Star Wars D6 game. Yes, in comparison to the modern games and their beautiful, coloured games it looks like watching the Empire Strikes Back on a grainy VHS tape, but it also feels like watching the Empire Strikes Back on a grainy VHS tape!

[Rakaydos]

If you enjoy it, thant it is a good system for you. It is genuinely great that you have a game that you enjoy, even if I don't.
However, I think that the concept of publishing whole new, full-priced corebooks for each sub-setting of the game to be a rather unleasant sales strategy that deserve some mockery. And on a personal level, I just don't like the colourful picture dice. They seem rather gimmicky to me, without adding much to the game which wouldn't require to buy even more stuff to properly play the game.

I like the old Star Wars D6 game. Yes, in comparison to the modern games and their beautiful, coloured games it looks like watching the Empire Strikes Back on a grainy VHS tape, but it also feels like watching the Empire Strikes Back on a grainy VHS tape!

It sounds like you never gave the FFG game a fair shake. Diceroller apps are free, and the dual-axis sucess/fail/advantage/complication effect of the dice pool leads to some very star-warsy situations. It requires a bit of thinking on your feet as GM, though, as you figure out a reasonable side effect on the fly.