Does Star Wars work well with Sandbox campaigns?

[Yora]

Every so often I'm coming back to an idea to run a Star Wars campaign. And the point where I usually don't make much progress is in deciding on a game structure to hold the campaign together.
In principle, I am a very outspoken proponent of sandbox campaigns in which the players roam around at their own volition. That's what RPGs are really made for as a medium. However, Star Wars is a setting created for narrative media. And the big Star Wars stories that constitute the primary references for what stories in Star Wars look like are pretty focused things with a somewhat clear mission to accomplish and events get more or less neatly tied up in a decisive fight against a main villain. (The Empire Strikes Back being the big strange exception that defines all conventional storytelling structure.)

So I am thinking, if the goal is to run a campaign that embodies and evokes the style of Star Wars stories, is a sandbox even a suitable structure to build it around?

Open world and unscripted stories does not have to mean PCs with no assigned goal. You can still assign the players a task that they have to pursue, for which many clues and hints are set out for them to discover, but not plot any path or plan for them to follow. Such a campaign structure would make the PCs more reactive than proactive but still provide them with a great degree of agency.

Thoughts on this?

 

[billd91]

I think it would work as well as any other partially fleshed out setting in which you'd be doing a lot of the work of setting up situations that are encounterable and interesting for the players to do. Between the canonical movies and TV shows and the now non-canonical expanded universe, you've got a lot of material to work with that could all be things out there in the Star Wars universe that the players could have their PCs interact with. You'd probably just want to emphasize that while there is a narrative going on in the setting, their relationship with it is largely their own choice. Things may come up that are related to that narrative that may cross their paths, but their choices will matter about how they react when that happens.

 

[jdrakeh]

It sure does! One of the best campaigns I've ever played in was a Star Wars EU campaign that drew in all kinds of crazy stuff from the Wookipedia and saw our heroes travelling all over the known universe (and some unknown parts, as well).

 

[Retreater]

Only if you set it on Tatooine.

 

[Yora]

I think detail on the setting really isn't an issue.

But what I am thinking off are archetypical Star Wars elements. Like memorable big villains and heroes being under pressure to stop a plan before the villain can complete it. Such things are generally not present when the players can roam freely and dabble with whatever catches their attention that day. And I think that might be something that could be felt to be a missing element for a Star Wars story.

 

[overgeeked]

So I am thinking, if the goal is to run a campaign that embodies and evokes the style of Star Wars stories, is a sandbox even a suitable structure to build it around?

Absolutely.

Open world and unscripted stories does not have to mean PCs with no assigned goal. You can still assign the players a task that they have to pursue, for which many clues and hints are set out for them to discover, but not plot any path or plan for them to follow. Such a campaign structure would make the PCs more reactive than proactive but still provide them with a great degree of agency.

Thoughts on this?

Star Wars is a perfect open world/sandbox setting. Scatter the clues and resources necessary for the PCs to accomplish whatever their goal is, thereby forcing them to explore. You can also have antagonists actively hunting the PCs and/or searching for the same things/clues the PCs are after. This, I think, gets you the best of both worlds.

But what I am thinking off are archetypical Star Wars elements. Like memorable big villains and heroes being under pressure to stop a plan before the villain can complete it. Such things are generally not present when the players can roam freely and dabble with whatever catches their attention that day. And I think that might be something that could be felt to be a missing element for a Star Wars story.

The best bits of Star Wars gaming advice comes from the old WEG books. The 1E base book. All kinds of great advice. I've heard the early Expanded Universe authors used it as a guide. Depending on how you feel about the early EU novels...

 

[bloodtide]

Star Wars is great for a sandbox. You just have to move beyond the focus of the movies.

The Star Wars movies are epic with archetypical Star Wars elements like a big villain and saving the galaxy.

But, say....have you ever watched a Star Wars TV show? They have made a bunch and more are on the way. They don't always have archetypical Star Wars elements. And some work just fine without them.

 

[MGibster]

What does it mean to be a sandbox? Because the way the OP describes it, it sounds like there's no narrative structure. And I would think about campaign needs some sort of narrative structure.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Every so often I'm coming back to an idea to run a Star Wars campaign. And the point where I usually don't make much progress is in deciding on a game structure to hold the campaign together.
In principle, I am a very outspoken proponent of sandbox campaigns in which the players roam around at their own volition. That's what RPGs are really made for as a medium. However, Star Wars is a setting created for narrative media. And the big Star Wars stories that constitute the primary references for what stories in Star Wars look like are pretty focused things with a somewhat clear mission to accomplish and events get more or less neatly tied up in a decisive fight against a main villain. (The Empire Strikes Back being the big strange exception that defines all conventional storytelling structure.)

So I am thinking, if the goal is to run a campaign that embodies and evokes the style of Star Wars stories, is a sandbox even a suitable structure to build it around?

Open world and unscripted stories does not have to mean PCs with no assigned goal. You can still assign the players a task that they have to pursue, for which many clues and hints are set out for them to discover, but not plot any path or plan for them to follow. Such a campaign structure would make the PCs more reactive than proactive but still provide them with a great degree of agency.

Thoughts on this?

That’s generally been how my group has run Star Wars. IMO it’s a very good setting for it. Lots of factions, interesting places, interesting people, easy motivations that have nothing to do with empires and republics and Jedi, like “put cool things on my ship” or “start and develop a criminal/trade/force tradition organization”, etc.

 

[Yora]

What does it mean to be a sandbox? Because the way the OP describes it, it sounds like there's no narrative structure. And I would think about campaign needs some sort of narrative structure.

You need to have some structure, but it doesn't have to be a narrative one. Campaigns with procedual structures can also work very well, like Blades in the Dark or Classic Dungeon Crawling.