A Star Wars Gaming General Thread

Reynard

aka Ian Eller
ETA: LET'S TRY AND REMEMBER TO KEEP THIS ABOUT STAR WARS GAMING SPECIFICALLY, NOT JUST STAR WARS GENERALLY. THANKS.

As opposed to the other Star Wars thread, which is mostly about movies, shows, books, comics, etc...

My group just finished a long D&D campaign and I polled them about what they might want to do next and Star Wars came up fast. I will probably use SWADE, because a) SWADE is perfect for Star Wars, and b) since I use Fantasy Grounds it is actually supported (unlike any licensed Star Wars game).

I am polling them now with the following options:
Nebulous Old Timey Star Wars when the Jedi and Sith are main factions and there's lots of Force Powers fights in addition to the usual space battles and what not.
Rebellion Era "Rebel Scum" campaign that is basically The Dirty Dozen in Star Wars, where most everyone is just a regular grunt and you are doing the bad stuff no one else is willing to do to win.
Smugglers and Pirates in the New Republic/Mandalorian era where it is more about making a buck than saving the galaxy.
OR We start with A New Hope but there are no Skywalkers or Solos and it is just whoever you decide to be and the campaign is a big "what if" story.

I have run Rebel Scum a few times and like it a lot.

What about you? Tell us about your past, present and future Star Wars gaming.
 
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I haven't actually RPG'd Star Wars in a long time (last time I sat at the table it was WEG and I was a teenager), but I'm definitely an enthusiast and would happily play or run a game given sufficient interest. I'm fond of FFG 's version and the SW5e out on the interwebs, but these days if I were to run Star Wars I would just use Level Up's Voidrunner's Codex, or maybe Stars Without Number.
 

Star Wars WEG, I ran Dead in the Undercity for the group. Sadly, players said they wanted to stop and continue the AD&D 2e campaign instead.

Star Wars d20 1e. We did play one adventure but I can't recall what it was. I bought Revised but never used it.

With Star Wars SAGA, I did a campaign about a family who owned a detective agency on a Cloud City. They solved mysteries but one of them was political with ramifications to the Rebels. Sadly, players said they wanted to stop and continue the D&D 3.5 campaign instead.

Star Wars FFG Outer Rim region. A four hour one-shot about a Mayday message coming from a secluded island on an ocean world. Players hated the icon dice system. Never played again.

The only Star Wars gaming I'm planning is with the FFG Outer Rim board game and its expansion. It's a great one player or two player game.
 

takes a deep breath.... ****
We used these rules for the game = Star Wars pbta (link)
We...

....started after the original trilogy and played our own version of the Grand admiral thrawn original trilogy.

We excluded everything in the entirety of Star Wars except for the original three movies.

So the players play through the events of the thrawn trilogy one of them was the Jedi that took over Luke's place in that novel, another one played the position that was kind of set for Leia. Then we had a net new character who was a former imperial stormtrooper.

This allowed Leia to work to establish the new Republic, Han Solo to be a general. And to bring home the idea of What happens immediately after the emperor dies.

We followed the events of the thrawn trilogy pretty closely with our own changes, The most notable ones being an attempted redemption of master C'boath , which was successful but he's still ended up dying.

That did however lead to Grand admiral Thrawn got away.

.....
So here is where our actual trilogy began...
Episode 7 (link)

We then picked up 18 years later as one player playing the daughter of Leia, and an NPC of Ben as her twin brother.

Then we had a player play the love interest for Ben, And we had a mandalorian bounty hunter hunting ex imperials.

The first movie in the trilogy was about them noticing how the "shattered empire" was preventing the new Republic from forming because every system wanted to be its own rulership. And there was a secret dark group inside the new Republic who was sabotaging all efforts to unify the galaxy.

The players brought these dark individuals to Justice and won the day at the end of the film. It had very new hope vibes.

Episode 8 (link)
In the next movie the players decided that their interim time they would be rebuilding naboo, because in our timeline it had been war-torn and never rebuilt.

After their efforts to rebuild naboo got underway, The last and only remaining start destroyer that Grand admiral Thrawn was on reaches the planet right about the time Ben is about to get married to the love interest. Leia and Han and several other important people are there for the potential wedding.

He carpet bombs the planet murdering everybody. The players mount a daring counterattack in the millennium falcon where they essentially crash land inside the Star destroyer.

Only to find that Grand admiral thrawn has been dead for decades, And that there is some dark force controlling the ship.

They then go on an adventure to try and find out who was controlling the ship and who was behind all of this. But the new Republic is still suffering and a lot of their manufacturing facilities and ships are also falling to a civil war of humans versus aliens. A confederation of worlds rises claiming that the empire was a human's fault and that aliens should not join the New Republic.

Ben works to create a police force called the first order, where he tries to single-handedly bring peace to the Galaxy with his Jedi powers, and becomes more and more violent and aggressive to do so.

As the other players are trying to figure out who this secret puppet Masters are Ben ends up taking the old star destroyer that had thrawns corpse on it... And finding out it had a beacon to a hidden planet.

The mandalorian downloads all of Thrawn's battle plans from the old Star destroyer and finds out that Grand admiral throne was actually a mandalorian (because they are a faction not a race in our game) And that he's actually been trying to hunt down some other dark force that has been plugging the empire for years. Apparently they ended up killing him.

Ben ends up taking the Star destroyer back to the source of the beacon and finds that it is a race of aliens called the sith who are awakening for their once every thousand years prophecy they get from the dark side of the Force.

He decides that if he can use a device that will bond his mind to theirs he may be able to control them or at least put them back into their stasis. His twin sister has a Jedi duel with him saying that they will simply control him and make him mad like everyone else... She actually ends up killing him in the duel.

Episode 9 (link)
During the third movie then we pick up some years later when this dark force has now found two new leaders: Darth Modera and Darth Zien. Who turn out to be former pupils of Luke Skywalker whom everybody thought was dead from a previous movie.

The players use Thrawn's journal to save the galaxy, following his orders from past the grave...

The players can sort to confront these two dark Jedi and find that they do have a dark master. All the while there are these massive terraforming machines that are turning on all over the Galaxy, called void reactors. But the void reactors are not turning on to terraform planets they're turning on to control the alien minds and cause mass civil war.

The players find out that the sith aliens are awakening and will soon leave their cryo stasis chambers to follow whatever their dark prophecy is.

After the players have defeated both of the Darth Jedi they go to confront the evil Lord and find out it's actually Ben, who had been saved by the sith and their strange technology.

Ben thinks he's actually is saving the galaxy by taking control of the sith and directing their efforts. But the players know better and instead of trying to fight him again which probably lead to his death they decide to try and reveal how the Darth Jedi were betraying him and pushing the sith agenda of mass chaos.

In a moment between twin brother and twin sister they are able to redeem Ben and then turn his connection to the sith against the dark aliens.

All the while Leia and Han have been trying to keep the galaxy together during the civil War, and Luke Skywalker has been trying to aid them with fighting the Darth Jedi.

Luke is there and the players have to make a choice that he offers...

  • set a destruction device and murder the entire species of sith
  • let Luke enter into the cryo chamber and try to mind meld with them to put them at ease and turn them away from the dark side.
............

I don't expect anyone to play this or use this as their truth, but hey, maybe it will give inspiration. :)

SOO much more happened... like tons i have left out.
 
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Star Wars was my most run TTRPG back in the 90s, and probably still accounts for the single IP with the most "runtime" in my gaming lifetime. Then again, when I got in to running Star Wars the EU didn't exist yet and other than the OG movies the WEG lore was Star Wars. My Star Wars campaigns evolved along with the EU as the various novels and comic books (and accompanying sourcebooks) were released. I'm not sure if there will ever be another Star Wars TTRPG campaign in my future because I am NOT a fan of what Disney has done with the IP (barring a couple of exceptions like Andor) and I don't feel I know the lore well enough any more, and have no interest in learning it either. Maybe if everyone was okay with a "Legends" campaign, or an alternate universe thing where only the OG movies are canon, then I might be persuaded to run Star Wars again.

As for past experiences, well, I've probably run every kind of Star Wars game you can imagine. Jedi, Sith, Imperials, Rebels, Smugglers, Bounty Hunters, Spies, Starfighter Pilots. My favorite campaign started out with the PCs as two bit smugglers with a crappy ship. The PCs spent some time gathering funds to mod their ship until it was on par with the Falcon. Then they got bored and went to work as spies for the Rebels. It didn't take long for them to become both valued agents, and bored of being spies. Then they traded their now very highly capable freighter to the Alliance in return for assignment to a starfighter squadron. They flew as starfighter pilots for a while until one of the PCs managed to steal a Corellian Corvette during one of their occasional missions as spies. One of the other PCs then became jealous of the fact that his party member had a ship as powerful as a Corellian Corvette, so he convinced the rest of the PCs to help him steal a Corellian Gunship. Then the campaign became a privateering affair as the PCs struck out with their new fleet of two capital ships, three starfighters, and a souped up tramp freighter that was reclaimed from the Alliance. They then became quite famous for capturing Imperial freighters and providing much needed supplies for the Rebels. Finally the Imperials decided to put an end to the PCs little pirate operation and they trapped the PC fleet with an Interdictor Cruiser and attacked the PCs with the full might of an Imperial Star Destroyer and it's entire complement of TIE Fighters. As the players had already made it clear that they wanted the campaign to end I made sure to not pull any punches and the PCs went out in a blaze of glory, taking both the Interdictor Cruiser and the Imperial Star Destroyer down with them. It was a glorious end to an amazing multi year campaign, and is one of the best TTRPG campaigns I ever ran!
 

First Star Wars game I’ve played was the d20 revised edition and I still love that game a lot (please don’t judge me)! I think it did some really nice things to change the standard 3e d20 formula that I still like (having separate Vitality/Wound pools, armor damage reduction, etc).

But nowadays my favourite version is the FFG one, which I started playing way back before release, with the Beta book with dice stickers (which came with the book!) and it was love at first sight play.
 

Im currently playing Star Wars Unlimited the TCG with some friends and its been the first SW game ive played in quite some time. Just a little tid bit on the timing of the question.

I dabbled for a hot min with SAGA edition back in the day. The same issue usually popped up where the era we ran in was rare force users and they were just better than everyone else so it wasnt all that fun to be angel summoners BMX bandit. (Not saying the system mandated this, it was more what the player expected of the force user and the GM didnt do much to dissuade them of the notion).

I had done a few one shots of the FFG gensys systems I had a buddy that was part of Fantasy Flight Games at the time. I really liked it and used the conversion table so the funky dice didnt make me sad at all. I enjoyed the range of success and failure that the system encouraged. It felt more SW than anything I had played to date. Though, I just found that when it comes to Sci-fi SW is way down the list of game worlds I want to play in,

I been thinking why SW doesnt work for me. I eventually landed on the idea that SW is a vibe for me. Its a series of epic moments and story beats that tells a hero's journey in a cool way. I want to emulate that, but I also dont want to sandbox it and make up my own characters etc.. As space opera goes, SW has always been more opera to me than space. I havnet found the right way to play that yet...

I would probably try and make a clean break of things. Set the game in the post first order world. Where there are no jedi and the force seems to be in a state of rediscovery by people. I think that would allow the force itself to be sort of a story element as folks are kind of lost in the dark about it at this point in the timeline. I vaguely remember the Bioware games where you had light and dark points I think a system like that would be ideal to use for this force rediscovery type of game and story.
 

The Old Republic, of Knights of the Old Republic, would be my choice of time period to play in. The Sith were a larger and more active antagonist at that time. And you don’t have to worry about bumping into modern canon if that sort of thing bothers you.

SWADE + Sci-Fi Companion would be my rule set of choice. Savage Worlds does a pretty good job of balancing powered and non-powered characters in my opinion. And the Sci-Fi Companion has a Jedi expy arcane background in there for you to use or tweak as preferred.
 

I think I've played every official Star Wars game to date, and I would say my favorite is the WEG d6 version. It handles action well, has some fun mechanics, and was part of the backbone of the SW resurgence when the novels came out. The d20 versions were okay, with the second edition being my favorite of the bunch. There was some nice info, but the game was kind of shoe-horned in spots to be "D&D in Star Wars" for me. FFG's game is a good time and would probably be a second runner up for me. The only issue I had was partially due to the group I ran it with, who really just couldn't get into the dice mechanics beyond "did I hit it?" situations.

If I were running Star Wars tomorrow, I think I'd use d6 with some tweaks and some of the stuff you can find online (like new sourcebooks made by fans).

Style-wise, I've always been a big fan of the Rebels on the Run kind of game. I usually start around the end of the Clone Wars and let time proceed from there. The last game I ran, which started in d20 SW and eventually was converted over to FFG, ran for about 13-ish years in real time and saw the group eventually being one of the ships that helped during the destruction of the second Death Star. At the beginning we had 6 players, and by the end the group was around 13 or so regular members.

I've been working on some ideas for a new campaign I'll eventually run, and I think I'll start in the High Republic Era for a change.
 


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