Star Wars Adventure Writing

[PallidPatience]

When I ran a Star Wars game, I broke down the films into sequences, and discovered that they follow a pattern. I then intentionally mimicked this pattern with my game arc. That helped to reproduce the Star Wars "feel" for me.

Raven Crowking posted this in the Star Wars Saga Edition thread. I was hoping for a little discussion, since I've always hoped to run a Star Wars game, and have always felt intimidated by the mythos involved. What sorts of things are considered when planning and writing a Star Wars adventure?

 

[exile]

1. Era, era, era (pick the era and stick to its conventions).
2. Planet-hopping (each planet must have distinct flavor).
2a. Tatooine (everyone goes to Tatooine when they are in trouble).
3. The Force (even if Jedi are in short supply).

That said, I once considered running a SW game that would break with most of these conventions. The characters would be guerilla fighters on a planet occupied by the empire. The campaign would be pretty much confined to the one planet (which is not Tatooine). Force use would be at a minimum, unless of course a Jedi happened to be in hiding there (which could certainly give the guerilla fighters a hand, but at the cost of having Vader, bounty hunters, and dark Jedi show up with increased frequency). Just thinking about it is making me want to try to resurrect the idea.

Another campaign/mini-series I considered running would involve taking the 1E slavers modules and converting them to Star Wars- basically have the players bust up a galactic slaving ring. Lots of room for Imperials and Fringe elements (especially Hutts) in this one.

In a SW game that I actually played in, the characters basically all comprised the crew of an independent ship that took on various tasks and sometimes engaged in illicit activities. There were a couple of Jedi that traveled with the group, overlooked the illicit activity, and fought the dark side where they could. The game lacked a cohesive theme, but played out against the backdrop of Episodes I-III; the coolest thing being that our characters got to take part in some key events (e.g. The Battle of Geonosis). Still, were I running the game, I'd shoot for a somewhat tighter theme- even at the cost of some of the Star Wars feel.

Chad

 

[kenobi65]

There were some good guidelines in the old WEG books for how to write SW adventures that *felt* like Star Wars.

One of the ones that still stands out to me is starting things in media res (in the middle of things). Think about how A New Hope stars with the battle between Vader's Star Destroyer and Leia's corvette. It's not until *after* the battle that we learn much of anything about *why* they're fighting, or who the characters are.

 

[gribble]

What sorts of things are considered when planning and writing a Star Wars adventure?

There were some very good articles in Star Wars Gamer magazine about this (before it went belly up - in fact from memory they were the last 3 issues). They were written by Robin Laws from memory.
Essentially the three articles can be summed up as:

• Make sure the PCs have goals and that you understand them and work them into your story: All the main protaganists in the movies had very clear cut goals - Leia to recruit Obi Wan into the rebellion (and in general, to see the rebellion succeed); Luke to escape Tattoine and bcome a hot-shot pilot; Han to pay off Jabba; Qui Gon to resolve the trade federation blockade; Anakin to save Padme; etc.
• It's all about the McGuffin: Episode IV was all about the death star - escaping with the plans to it, discovering it, ultimately destroying it; Episode I was all about Anakin - discovering him, realising his potential, ultimately agreeing to train him; Episodes V was all about Vader's search for Luke.
• Planning encounters: This article was the realisation that encounters are basically a set of tasks that the PCs can either succeed with or fail. If they succeed then they move onto the next encounter(duh!), but if they don't, then they also move onto the next encounter - it's just different and potentially more difficult.

Anyway, that might sound like fairly generic adventure building advice, but it was all written very well, and put into a Star Wars context, and explained why each of the above was particularly important when emulating that Star Wars feel.

 

[Shadowbit]

Raven Crowking posted this in the Star Wars Saga Edition thread. I was hoping for a little discussion, since I've always hoped to run a Star Wars game, and have always felt intimidated by the mythos involved. What sorts of things are considered when planning and writing a Star Wars adventure?

I actually ran across this last night, then saw your post today. An article written by Steve Darlington on Star Wars adventures:

http://ptgptb.org/0022/theforce.html


-SB

 

[Odhanan]

I wish Raven Crowking would explain what patterns he found in the Star Wars movies and re-created at the game table so we can discuss it more thoroughly. Please, RC?

 

[RFisher]

To start with, these three themes seem to dominate (at least in Eps IV, V, & VI):

• Infiltration (Intercepting the Death Star plans. Deactivating the Death Stars tractor beam. Rescuing the princess. Rescuing Han from Jabba. Bothan spywork. Deactivating the shield generator on Endor's moon. Perhaps even: Getting a snub fighter--or small freighter--close enough to a Death Star's weakness.)
• Escape & pursuit (The Tantive IV chased by a Star Destroyer. Chasing R2-D2 into the Dune Sea. Getting R2-D2 off Tatooine. Escaping the Death Star. Essentially all of Ep V. Escaping Jabba.)
• Confrontation (Vader & Ben. Attacking the Death Star. Luke & Vader in Ep V. Luke & Jabba. Luke, Vader, & Palpatine. Attacking another Death Star.)

Yeah, you have the whole Dogabah thing, but that's something I think I'd tend to use less in a game.

 

[The_Gneech]

I actually ran across this last night, then saw your post today. An article written by Steve Darlington on Star Wars adventures:

http://ptgptb.org/0022/theforce.html


-SB

Nice article!

One item of note in the old WEG first edition, was that each adventure should have at least one instance of the following five elements, though not necessarily all in the same game session:

1) A scene solved with gunplay (and by extension, lightsaber/Jedi fu)

2) A scene involving ship-to-ship combat

3) A scene involving a chase (either the heroes running or the heroes chasing badguys)

4) A scene requiring interaction with NPCs (bargaining, conning, commanding, etc.)

5) A scene requiring problem-solving (searching for missing items, figuring out clues)

I would add to this that you need:

6) Many and varied locales, preferably with lots of hazards (asteroids, nebulae, or high-traffic areas in vehicles; jungles full of dangerous creatures, impossibly-narrow catwalks over vast chasms, a cruiser careening out of control in a decaying orbit)

7) A major villain that the characters can't hurt at first (either because he's too powerful, he's too important politically, because they only ever see him via comlink, or something similar) but with whom they interact on at least a periodic basis -- they probably go through a ton of his minions over the course of the story but rarely get to have it out with him personally

8) Something unique to the party, be it a tricked-out ship, a highly unusual droid (my party in the post-RotJ era has a heavily-modified B1 battledroid that once belonged to Count Dooku as an NPC in the group ... and they keep hearing unsettling things about locked functions and finding unexpected abilities)

-The Gneech